I was reading the newspaper yesterday during rehearsal (yes, I do still read the newspaper - old school) and read a story about a suspected Orange County serial killer named, Itzcoatl Ocampo. Itzcoatl is accused of killing 4 homeless men by stabbing them over 40 times each. But, that’s not what intrigued me about the story. Itzcoatl is a former Marine, like myself, who spent a tour in Iraq working in triage - which meant he was in charge of examining the wounded and directing them to the proper spot for care. So what, right? Well, the LA Times journalist who wrote the article interviewed his former roommates and a few former Marines who served with him and they all told the same story of a young man who started to show signs of mental illness. They described incidents where Itzcoatl would wake up in the middle of the night screaming at the top of his lungs, or fidgeting and spacing out during his waking hours. The Marine Corps even documented that he was showing these signs and that a mental disorder was present with Itzcoatl. But, regardless of those findings, he left the Marine Corps and attempted to transition into civilian life.

Itzcoatl came home to his family, now living inside of a big rig truck in a parking lot in Orange County. Itzcoatl’s father, Refugio Ocampo, had lost his job during Itzcoatl’s time in the Marine Corps and was doing odd jobs to keep his family fed. Refugio said that his son was very charitable and the article documents numerous times in which he gave his last dime to those he felt needed it more.

Itzcoatl, now home from the Marine Corps, began looking for work but could not seem to get any callbacks - despite his military experience and “service” to the country. Then at the end of 2011, police say that Itzcoatl killed four homeless men.

Now, believe me, I’m not justifying these slayings (if Itzcoatl in fact committed these murders), but I am asking you to look deeper into this story. Here is a young man who joined the Marine Corps, in the same manner that I did, under the guise of money for school and “serving” his country and his family. Then this young man was sent to fight in a war and is exposed to the gruesome sight of wounded men and women, dead bodies and brutal violence EVERY day that he was in that Iraq desert. He would come home and find that no matter how many times he put his own life at risk, this country couldn’t provide the basic needs that his own family needed to properly survive — his family was homeless. Finally, he separates from the military with documented mental illness and finds that as a veteran you may not get the help needed to properly transition: with both healthcare and job placement.

Could this have been prevented? Is Itzcoatl’s story an isolated one? Itzcoatl’s family and friends say he was often paranoid after his time in the Marines, believing that people were out to kill him. He would look for weapons he believed were hidden in various places so he could remove them and make sure they weren’t used to kill himself and his family. He was a classic PTSD case.  To me, this is the story of another pawn in the US’s game for imperialist gain and when he had served his purpose in that game, he was thrown away. Itzcoatl should have been in a facility that could offer him the care he needed. I hope that this story spreads and that we start to take a serious look at cases of PTSD. We will see a large number of these cases in our future as this war comes to an “end,” and these pawns begin to come home. 

A video has been circulating on the internet of 5 or 6 Marines urinating on dead Afghans. Folks have been hitting me up trying to get my opinion on the matter and I’ve had the same answer to them all, “I don’t know enough of the details surrounding the incident to make an educated statement.” I hold true to that still. BUT, if it is as simple as what we see on that video, we need to ask the question, “What did you expect?” We watched the last president declare war on an entire region and we’re surprised that Marines are urinating on dead bodies? In war, the only way to live with yourself after putting a bullet into another man’s head is to dehumanize them. This is why when we kill each other in the streets, we call our “enemies” names like slobs, crabs, nigguhs, marks, etc. because like my big homie Bone says, “You can’t kill your brother, but you can kill a nigguh.” Yes, I despise those Marines who did that to the dead, but I know that I should really be mad at the country that continues to flex its military force secondary to the fact that its citizens are broke. Itzcoatl is another victim of this cycle and in order for us to truly address it, we must first find the root of it. Dump.