{"id":76482,"date":"2017-12-12T09:00:51","date_gmt":"2017-12-12T14:00:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=76482"},"modified":"2022-01-23T22:47:20","modified_gmt":"2022-01-24T03:47:20","slug":"thomas-prasenski-phony-purple-heart","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=76482","title":{"rendered":"Thomas Prasenski; phony Purple Heart"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Thomas Prasenski was featured in an Albany Times-Union<\/a> article a few months ago in which they discuss the circumstances of his discharge from the Army. According to the article, he either maliciously or carelessly shot another soldier, Army Reservist Staff Sergeant Dwayne Cole, who is now permanently disabled as a result.<\/p>\n

The bullet, lodged in his spine, just missed his jugular vein. Cole has been confined to a wheelchair ever since, paralyzed from the chest down, with use of only his left arm.<\/p>\n

Prasenski, on the other hand, has gone on to lead a celebrated life. Despite a bad conduct discharge, as Army records show, he is the commander of the regional Military Order of the Purple Heart, Chapter 446, in Albany and an honored guest at many area Purple Heart ceremonies. In July, he was the first to drive into a newly designated parking spot for Purple Heart recipients in Schenectady. In August he and other veterans were honored at Purple Heart Day in Malta.<\/p>\n

On both occasions, he stood with elected officials including Congressman Paul Tonko, state Sen. Jim Tedisco, Assembly members Angelo Santabarbara and Carrie Woerner.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Since the article published, Prasenski has been ejected from MOPH, and questions about his Purple Heart arose. <\/p>\n

So we filed for a FOIA;<\/p>\n

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Apparently, he showed MOPH a set of orders for his Purple Heart in order to get into the organization;<\/p>\n

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It may be that because I’m so cynical, but these orders don’t look right to me. They’re for a wound which occurred in June, 2006. Looking at the discharge forms, he left Iraq the first time in 2005 and returned in 2007, so I don’t know how he could be wounded in 2006. Secondly, the orders number just doesn’t look right. Dates always catch these guys up.<\/p>\n

The article says that Prasenski was evacuated for the time he was injured in an IED incident, and that may be true, but his injuries didn’t merit a Purple Heart, looking at his records. So I guess he decided to award one to himself. <\/p>\n

It’s good to see MOPH get proactive on this one. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Thomas Prasenski was featured in an Albany Times-Union article a few months ago in which they … Thomas Prasenski; phony Purple Heart<\/span>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":76483,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30,391],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-76482","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-phony-soldiers","category-valorvultures"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76482","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=76482"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76482\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/76483"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=76482"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=76482"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=76482"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}