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Lejeune social worker killed in Iraq shooting

The Navy officer who was among five service members fatally shot by a soldier Monday at Camp Liberty, Iraq, was a licensed clinical social worker who had worked with Marines, a spokesman in Iraq said.

Cmdr. Charles K. Springle, 52, of Wilmington, N.C., had been sent to the 55th Medical Company in Iraq as an individual augmentee from a counseling center on Marine Corps Base Camp Lejeune, N.C.

Three of the other service members were enlisted soldiers, and the fifth was an Army doctor.

Sgt. John M. Russell, 44, a soldier from the Bamberg, Germany-based 370th Engineer Company, 54th Engineer Battalion, has been charged with five counts of murder and one count of aggravated assault.

Russell remains in custody in Iraq. The identities of the other victims have not been released pending notification of their families.

Lt. Cmdr. John Daniels, a Navy spokesman at the Pentagon, said Springle leaves a wife, who is a civilian nurse, and two adult children. His son, a Marine, recently returned from a tour in Iraq. His daughter is married to a Marine.

The Army has initiated a probe to determine if there are adequate mental health facilities in Iraq, said Lt. Col. David Patterson, a spokesman for Multi-National Corps-Iraq.

According to an Army official who spoke on condition of anonymity, preliminary reports show Russell was unarmed when he was escorted to the combat stress clinic at Camp Liberty, a sprawling U.S. base near Baghdad’s international airport. Once inside, he got into a verbal altercation with the staff and was asked to leave. The soldier and his escort got back into their vehicle and began to drive away, according to the Army official.

At some point during the drive, Russell got control of his escort’s weapon and ordered the escort out of the vehicle, the Army official said. The soldier then drove back to the clinic, walked in and began shooting, the official said.

“Any time we lose one of our own, it affects us all,” MNC-I spokesman Col. John Robinson said. “Our hearts go out to the families and friends of all the service members involved in this terrible tragedy.”

During a news briefing Monday afternoon at the Pentagon, Defense Secretary Robert Gates expressed his “horror and deep regret” over the shooting, adding that officials are still in the process of gathering information on exactly what happened.

“Such a tragic loss of life at the hands of our own forces is a cause of great and urgent concern,” he said.

When asked if the suspected gunman had been deployed multiple times, Adm. Michael Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said he did not have that information. However, he said, the tragedy occurred while service members were seeking help at the clinic.

“It does speak to me for the need for us to redouble our efforts in terms of dealing with the stress [of combat],” Mullen said. “It also speaks to the issues of multiple deployments [and] increasing dwell time.”

The death toll from the Monday shooting was the highest for U.S. personnel in a single attack since April 10, when a suicide truck driver killed five American soldiers with a blast near a police headquarters in Mosul, in northern Iraq.

Related reading

• USA Today reporters discuss Liberty shooting, stress clinics

• Father says son accused in shooting snapped

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