Stress 'Broke' Soldier Shooter: Dad

The stunned father of the soldier accused of killing five fellow service members in Iraq tells a local TV station his son snapped under stress. John Russell—a technician who used robots to detonate roadside bombs—thought the military was trying to force him out, and told his wife that he had been threatened by officers, his father said in an interview with KTEN of Denison, Texas.

"They broke him,” said Wilburn Russell. "He didn’t know how to ask for help. When they go to the stress center and ask for help they belittle them because they ask for help." Russell, who was nearing the end of his third tour in Iraq "lived for the military," his father said. But he criticized the policy that calls for multiple tours, the New York Times reports, saying, "Nobody should have to go three times. They should’ve realized that."
(More John Russell stories.)