opinion

Roberts: Beyond shameful: veteran kicked to curb, then run over

For more than a decade, he served in the U.S. Marine Corps, working as an elite combat specialist before being honorably discharged in 2002.

Eleven years later, he was found in the middle of a Phoenix street, right outside the VA hospital. He was lying in a fetal position in a pool of blood, with tire tracks over his body.

A VA hospital bracelet still on his wrist.

Apparently, hospital staffers didn’t remove it when they refused him psychiatric help and kicked him to the curb.

You cannot read Dennis Wagner’s story on the treatment Jason Cooper received by the United States of America – by us -- and not want to throw up. Or throw something.

This? This is the way we treat a decorated Marine who served us for 11 years?

Cooper’s story was laid out in a federal lawsuit against the Department of Veterans Affairs, filed last Thursday on his behalf.

The suit says Cooper served as a Marine for 11 years until 2002, when he was honorably discharged after completion of his service.

In 2009, he was diagnosed with schizophrenia and spent months in a VA psychiatric unit in La Jolla before being released to outpatient care. He suffered a breakdown in 2013 and wound up on the streets of San Diego, unable to get regular doses of the medication he needed from the VA "due to various and systematic problems with the VA system."

On Nov. 29, 2013, "while in a psychotic state", he took a bus to Phoenix, where he knew no one. Police found him wandering around, disoriented and delivered him in handcuffs to the Carl T. Hayden VA Medical Center at 8:20 p.m.

Not even three hours later, the ER discharged him, according to the lawsuit.

Never mind that he was disoriented and disheveled when he was brought in to the hospital. Or that VA records detailed his extensive psychiatric treatment.

Never mind that a VA psychiatric nurse from California had filed a missing persons report about Cooper and when contacted, advised Phoenix police to take him to the nearest VA emergency room, sure that they would help him.

Cooper was sent packing at 11:09 p.m.

At 5:20 a.m., the next morning, Cooper was found in the middle of the street outside the hospital, “near dead, lying in a fetal position in the middle of the street with tire marks over his body, in a puddle of blood.”

He suffered multiple injuries that required multiple surgeries. For the rest of his life, he'll live with a serious traumatic brain injury, unable to speak well or walk well or perform many activities of daily living that most of us take for granted.

They say there is no such thing as a former Marine. Once you’ve served, you remain one of the few, the proud … and sometimes the forgotten.

Shame doesn’t even begin to cover it.

The Department of Veterans Affairs denied a claim for damages, made on Cooper's behalf, prompting the lawsuit.

A Phoenix VA spokeswoman told Wagner that the department does not comment on litigation.

Because really, what could they say?