Author: Jonn Lilyea

  • EIB testing to change

    EIB testing to change

    The Army Times writes an article about how testing for the Expert Infantry Badge will change.

    The infantry branch is in the midst of a pilot program, with soldiers testing out ideas to update the evaluation’s 30 tasks and the way they’re graded, led by a senior NCO at Fort Benning, Georgia.

    “Their feedback was really essential to rolling out this new standard, making sure it was validated before it hit the horse,” Master Sgt. Charles Evans, from the office of the Chief of the Infantry, said in a Monday release. “Just working out all the kinks and making sure that all the tasks were applicable, realistic and up to date with the latest doctrine.”

    EIB testing consists of 30 tasks carried out in three lanes: a weapons, patrol and medic lane. The basics will be the same, the release said, but there will be some reworking to the way soldiers complete indirect fire, move under fire, grenades, CPR and care under fire.

    Mostly, changes will affect the options units have for conducting testing in general, in order to standardize and streamline the process, the release said.

    Yeah, I don’t understand what the big deal is, other than that comment about “working out all the kinks and making sure that all the tasks were applicable, realistic”. I guess they might be making it easier for people who are joining the infantry based on their gender.

    Capt. Michelle Roberts earned her EIB seven years ago. I’m not sure what they expect changing standards and streamlining the process to do. I was the NCOIC for EIB testing for the 3rd Infantry Division for three years, the process already worked for us.

  • Wednesday morning feel good stories

    Wednesday morning feel good stories

    From San Antonio, Texas;

    The homeowner told officers he heard a noise at the house on West Houston Street, near Northwest 20th Street, just before 11 p.m.

    He says he grabbed his gun and went to check out the noise when he shot an intruder. The suspect died at the scene.

    Police spent the night talking to several other people in the area who might have witnessed something.

    As of Tuesday morning, investigators said it did not appear the homeowner would be facing any charges, but the incident remained under investigation.

    From Pasadena, Maryland;

    Investigators wrote that the man and woman who live in the home were asleep upstairs when their dog began to bark “excessively,” prompting the man to pick up a pocket knife and go downstairs.

    The man found an intruder naked in the upstairs hallway while wielding a large kitchen knife taken from the home, police wrote, and the two proceeded to fight one another with their knives.

    Both were badly hurt, police wrote, with the resident suffering large cuts to the left side of his neck and “chest/abdomen area.”
    Seven charged in heroin ring, including 2015 Annapolis shooting victim

    The woman tried to assist the man during the fight and suffered a defensive wound to her left palm, police wrote.

    When police arrived, the man told officers that the intruder ran downstairs and out of the house.

    The couple was taken to local hospitals to be treated for their injuries.

    After police began searching for the intruder with K-9 and helicopter support, according to charging documents, investigators found several homes in the area of Pasadena Yacht Yard Road with “blood marks” on the backdoors, indicating he may have tried to break into them.

    Officers said they found Koletty naked and badly injured in a wooded area nearby, behind a home on Jackpine Drive, after receiving a call from a resident, police wrote.

    Investigators said Koletty had lost a large amount of blood from the fight, and a booking photo provided by police shows a large laceration on the left side of his neck along with other wounds.

    Koletty was taken to the University of Maryland Shock Trauma Center, where he spent two days being treated for his injuries before being released Friday.

    From Fort Worth, Texas;

    The intruders pretended to be Nevada Gaming Commission officers when they attacked a housekeeper and entered the family’s house in the Woodhaven neighborhood.

    “Right when she gets to the door, they say, ‘You’re under arrest” and just grab her,” homeowner Michael Riccubuono told KXAS-TV (NBC5).

    The housekeeper was confronted after returning from the store about 2 p.m. Monday. The intruders told her they had a warrant for her arrest and followed her when she ran inside.

    Riccubuono’s wife, who was in the backyard doing yoga, saw the man and woman assaulting her employee and fled.

    That’s when Benny and Butch [the family dogs] saved the day, chasing the man and woman out of the house.

    “They just … they went into action,” Riccubuono said.

    The couple escaped in a maroon car. Police did not release a detailed description of the car or the suspects. A motive remains unclear, but the homeowner believes it was an attempted robbery.

    Police suspect the intruders targeted the family because Riccubuono sells slot machines to casinos around the world.

    From Durham, North Carolina;

    According to police, officers responded to a shooting and attempted robbery at the Guess Road Mini Mart, located at 2014 Guess Road, around 9:30 p.m. Monday. Once on scene, the employee at the store told police that a man had come into the store and brought a beer up to the front counter. Once at the counter, the suspect then went behind the counter, pulled out a gun and said he was robbing the store.

    According to the employee, he struggled with the suspect — identified as Kevin White, 38 — and grabbed the gun. The employee said he then fired shots when White moved towards him. The suspect ran out of the store before officers got to the scene.

    A few minutes after responding to the call, police found a man matching the suspect’s description lying in front of a house on Hillcrest Street, which police said is just a short distance from the store. The man lying on the ground had been shot int he legs.

    White was taken to the hospital for treatment. Once released, he was taken to the Durham County Jail and charged with attempted robbery with a dangerous weapon and possession of a firearm by a convicted felon.

    From Raleigh, North Carolina;

    Raleigh police said Monday the young man found dead over the weekend was a robbery suspect.

    A news release said that 21-year-old Derrick Malik Wiley was a suspect in a robbery at the Mini Mart on the 5500 block of Old Wake Forest Road.

    Wiley and an employee exchanged gunfire Saturday, and Wiley was shot in the leg, police said.

    Police found Wiley about two and a half miles from the store.

    The owner of the Mini Mart told CBS 17 Monday afternoon that the incident began when someone outside the store saw a man wearing a mask walking inside, so they called 911.

    Once inside, the suspect pointed a gun at the store clerk, who handed over about $400 in cash, the store owner said.

    The owner says as the suspect ran outside, the clerk followed him out the door and told the suspect that the police were on their way.

    That’s when the suspect shot at the clerk, who then shot back, the store owner said.

  • Bob McGray; phony SEAL

    Bob McGray; phony SEAL

    Our partners at Military Phonies send us their work on this fellow Robert “Bob” McGray who claims to be a Navy SEAL with SEAL Team 5 from 1960 – 1975 when he was injured in Vietnam;

    The newspaper to which he wrote that missive, admitted that McGray was blowing smoke;

    But lying on Facebook is totally cool;

    The Navy agrees with the newspaper editor;

    Bob’s Summary Sheet shows that he served less than 2 years of active duty in the US Navy and over 4 years in the US Navy reserves and discharged as a Seaman Recruit (E-1). He has no awards, was NOT a Vietnam Veteran, NO Purple Heart, NO Deployment, NO BUD/S, NO SEAL Command and NOT a SEAL.

  • North Koreans may repatriate 55 sets of servicemen’s remains next week

    AW1Ed sends us a link from Stars & Stripes which reports that the North Korean government may allow 55 sets of MIA/KIA remains to the United States as early as next week;

    The Americans planned to send transit cases via truck to the DMZ, where they would be given to the North Koreans to use for the remains. “They’re going to use our cases for the remains and give them back to us,” the official told Stars and Stripes.

    A U.S. delegation was expected to retrieve the remains in North Korea and fly them out on July 27, either to Osan Air Base in South Korea or Hawaii, the official said, adding that the date may change as the two sides planned to iron out final details during another meeting in the near future.

    The date would be symbolic as it marks the 65th anniversary of the signing of the armistice that ended the war instead of a peace treaty.

  • Nicaragua; another communist paradise

    Last week, hundreds of Nicaraguans were trapped inside a church by their government’s sharpshooters after they had taken to the streets to demand the resignation of Daniel Ortega, the Castro puppet who has been president of the Central American country a couple of times over the past few decades.

    The standoff was the latest in a series of clashes between government forces and protesters who are demanding the resignation of President Daniel Ortega and a return to democracy in Nicaragua. In recent weeks, protesters erected barricades in cities across the country to keep out government forces, including at the National Autonomous University of Nicaragua (UNAN), which students have occupied over the past two months.

    In recent days, gunmen in plainclothes, who appear to be coordinating with police, have been leading a charge to break through the barricades. Convoys of these gunmen, known as turbas, swept into cities south of the capital, such as Jinotepe and Diriamba, earlier this week and clashed with protesters in attacks that left at least 21 people dead.

    According to AFP ten more people were killed yesterday, on Monday, as pro-government forces reduced the barricades;

    Residents and rights groups had earlier said that troops used mechanical shovels in the early hours of the day to clear barricades in at least three areas.

    “They are going to destroy Masaya, it is absolutely surrounded,” Vilma Nunez, president of the Nicaraguan Center for Human Rights (CENIDH), told AFP.

    “We are being attacked by the National Police and paramilitaries armed with AK-47s and machine guns in our indigenous neighborhood of Monimbo,” said Alvaro Gomez, a resident. “We are resisting with homemade bombs and stones.”

    I guess that most of the pro-communist folks in the United States are incapable of seeing that communism is a suicide pact among populations that elect people like Ortega and Venezuela’s Maduro to political supremacy.

    The semi-official website El 19 Digital said that government forces had “liberated” the town of Niquinohomo as part of a “clean-up operation” in several southern towns, including Monimbo.

    Monimbo has been a center of resistance against the government of President Daniel Ortega since a wave of protests began April 18 over a since-aborted pension reform plan.

    Since then, violence has claimed over 270 lives, most of them civilians, according to CENIDH.

  • Marine 1st Lt. Travis Manion may get Navy Cross

    Marine 1st Lt. Travis Manion may get Navy Cross

    Military.com reports that Congressman Duncan Hunter has written a letter to Secretary of Defense James Mattis requesting that the Department of Defense reconsider the posthumous award of the Navy Cross for Marine 1st Lt. Travis Manion.

    Manion was awarded a Silver Star for his actions in Fallujah, Iraq during a firefight on April 29, 2007 which cost him his life while he tried to extract his Marines from a building.

    Even though folks on the ground recommended Manion for the Navy Cross, pencil pushers in the Pentagon downgraded the award to a Silver Star;

    Now new evidence from a Marine who was on the ground with Manion in Fallujah that day “removes any doubt,” Hunter said, that those in the field had it right.

    “The Silver Star is a big deal,” he told Military.com. “But I think if new information and evidence comes to light, which we think did, and it could get upgraded to a Navy Cross, then this would call attention again to his heroic actions — how he fought, how he died and his family’s sacrifice.”

    Manion and his men were ambushed while searching a suspected insurgent house in Iraq. His corpsman was shot in the abdomen, and Manion and another lieutenant went into the fray to drag him to safety.

    As the firefight got more intense, Manion fired a grenade and then began laying down heavy suppressive fire from his M4, according to former Staff Sgt. Paul Petty’s account, which was also sent to Mattis.

    Running low on ammunition, Manion requested more and began distributing magazines to his other Marines. As he handed one over, he was mortally wounded, but not before he’d fired off up to 300 rounds at the enemy’s location, Petty wrote.

    “His well-aimed precision fire, decisive leadership and selfless action aided in the preservation of life and helped counter the ambush,” Petty’s account states.

    Manion was assigned to 1st Reconnaissance Battalion, 1st Marine Division, I Marine Expeditionary Force at the time of his death.

  • In pursuit

    In pursuit

    Las Vegas Sheriff Department released body camera footage of a deputy in pursuit of two suspects involved in an attempted murder. While they tried to escape, the pair fired 34 rounds at police. The deputy in the video returned fire while he was driving. Many shots were fired through his windshield. From ABC News;

    The suspects were later identified as Fidel Miranda, 23, and Rene Nunez, 30.

    Miranda was declared dead at the scene while Nunez was taken into custody after receiving treatment for a gunshot wound, police said. This is the 10th officer-involved shooting in Las Vegas this year.

  • Col. Editha Ruiz, 1st Lt. Alexander Seawright and  Spc. Won Seok Kim saving the world

    Col. Editha Ruiz, 1st Lt. Alexander Seawright and Spc. Won Seok Kim saving the world

    According to Stars & Stripes three soldiers assigned to the U.S. military hospital at Yongsan Garrison in Seoul, South Korea witnessed a Korean woman when she was struck by a small truck and rolled underneath the vehicle.

    Col. Editha Ruiz, deputy commander for nursing, and 1st Lt. Alexander Seawright, a nurse, performed first aid while Spc. Won Seok Kim, the command driver, translated and helped keep others on the scene calm until an ambulance arrived.

    “We saw a lady get out of her car, trip and hit an incoming small truck, then she kind of rolled underneath,” Ruiz said Tuesday in a telephone interview. “I said, ‘oh my God, oh my God, we’ve got to help her.’”

    Ruiz, 53, of Waipahu, Hawaii, said they found the woman face down and bleeding.

    “My biggest fear was that she had a neck injury, so I told 1st Lt. Seawright to make sure her head was steady,” Ruiz said, adding her team didn’t have equipment with them so they mainly worked to stabilize the woman until the ambulance arrived.

    “It took about 20 minutes for the ambulance to get there, because, of course, traffic was backed up,” she said.

    There is no word on the condition of the 65-year-old victim.