The killing of Jamie Dean

Police in rural Maryland staged a military stakeout and shot a troubled Army vet. As his family plans to sue, they are asking how a soldier being treated for PTSD could be shipped to Iraq.

By Julia Dahl

Read more: Politics, Veterans, News, post-traumatic stress disorder, Iraq War

Sept. 5, 2007 | Jamie Dean had been holed up in his childhood home for six hours when the tear gas canisters came crashing through the windows. It was a little after 4 a.m., the day after Christmas 2006, and Sgt. James Emerick Dean, 29, formerly of the 25th Infantry Division, knew he was surrounded. The white farmhouse was tucked beside a grove of trees in Leonardtown, a rural hamlet in southern Maryland, where Dean's family once raised tobacco. Now, from behind the blinds, Dean could see cops with flashlights creeping around his backyard. He could see police cars on the dirt road outside the house. He could hear the sirens and the shouting and the buzz of the police radios.

It had been a month since Dean had gotten word he'd have to go back to war. He had already served a year in Afghanistan. He'd done and seen things over there he couldn't talk about, and now they were sending him to Iraq. Like tens of thousands of soldiers fighting the post-9/11 wars, Dean was being treated by the Department of Veterans Affairs for post-traumatic stress disorder -- but the Army didn't know that because the Army and the V.A. don't typically share medical records.

Before joining the Army, Dean was a merry prankster with a contagious smile. But the terror he felt clearing caves in Afghanistan followed him home to Maryland, and despite having a loving family, a new wife and a good job, when Dean got called back up, he began to crack. On Christmas night, he snapped. The outcome would be tragic. The Maryland State Police would be cited for flawed and overly aggressive military tactics. And the whole sorry state of America's need for fighters in Iraq would be exposed.

Christmas Day began with a fight between Dean and his wife, Muriel Dean. It was about his drinking again. Ever since he had received the notice he was being shipped to Iraq, it had gotten heavier and heavier. Late in the afternoon, Jamie fled for Toots, the bar in Hollywood, Md., where he and Muriel had met a year before. The outgoing Muriel, who worked in the personnel department of a computer company, adored her husband. But she was frustrated and angry. She called Jamie at the bar and he came storming home.

"If you wanna be at the bar, be at the bar," she told him. "But if you're gonna get drunk tonight, don't come home." Jamie threw a box of wine onto the kitchen floor and started beating the cupboards with his fists. Glasses shattered and shards fell to the floor. Muriel was scared; she'd never seen him like this before. She went into the bedroom and started putting clothes into a bag to leave for the night. If you leave, Jamie told her, "I'm going to burn the fucking house down." He went out back and got a gas can and lighter. When he came back, Muriel managed to get the gas away from him. "Why would you wanna burn something down we've worked so hard for?" she asked. "You don't know how much I love you," Jamie said, standing in the doorway. "The next time you see me I'll be in a body bag."

Dean fled the house and drove his Chevy Silverado eight miles to his family farm. His father, Joey, lived there alone -- he and Jamie's mother, Elaine, had separated while Dean was in Afghanistan -- but his father wasn't home. Dean started drinking again. He took a shotgun from one of the gun cabinets in the back of the house, and called his mom's house. His sister Kelly, an Air Force medic who has served in Germany and Iraq, answered the phone. To her, Dean didn't sound like himself. He was agitated and then his voice got scarily calm. "I just want to go home," Dean told her over the phone. "Everything will be easier then."

He shot off the gun and then there was silence. Kelly screamed but he didn't answer. Later she would say she thought Dean was dead. "I freaked," she says. "I couldn't get him back on the phone. I couldn't hear any movement on the other end. So I did what any person would do and I called 911."

Police dispatched a car to the house to check on Dean's welfare. When he refused to come out, more police cars rolled up, and officers with guns and flashlights surrounded the property.

At 10 p.m., an officer from the St. Mary's sheriff's department got on the phone with Dean, who was drunk and clearly depressed. He was slurring his words. The officer prattled on, filling the long silences between Dean's mostly monosyllabic answers by trying to assure Dean they didn't want to arrest him, they just needed him to come outside and tell them everything was all right. Dean alternated between despondency and bravado. One minute he whispered that no one understood or respected what he did in the war, and the next, he said that if the police didn't back off it was "gonna get ugly."

Over police radios, information began trickling in: He has guns in the house. (Like most area families, the Deans were hunters.) He has had a fight with his wife. He's a veteran and he's headed back to war.

Around 11 p.m., Dean's family came rushing to the house, but police wouldn't let them up the driveway. "We'll call you if we need you," one officer told Dean's uncle Rob Purdy curtly.

By midnight, two different sheriff's departments had deployed emergency response teams to the scene, surrounding the farmhouse with police vehicles and more armed men. At just after 4 a.m., those SWAT-like teams began firing tear gas into the house. The canisters smashed through the windows and penetrated the walls. Police fired between 40 and 60 rounds into the house, 10 times the amount needed to incapacitate a person. Dean came out the back door, raised his shotgun and fired. For 15 minutes, he paced around, walking in and out of the house, until he finally retreated inside.

Late the next morning, the Maryland State Police rolled up with an armored vehicle. Five minutes later, one of the Charles County snipers accidentally discharged his weapon. Two minutes after he heard the sniper fire, Dean fired his gun from the back of the house, though the shot did not seem to be aimed at anyone. For the next 30 minutes, negotiators attempted to get Dean back on the phone. When they finally did, he told them, once again, to get out of his family's yard or he'd shoot. Officers stepped back toward one of the two "Peace Keeper" armored vehicles that was parked just outside the house. Dean fired again, this time at the ground.

At 12:45 p.m., officers cut power to the house. Dean was surrounded. There was an armored vehicle in the back of the house and one just a few feet from the front door. Both were firing tear gas at him. Finally, Dean stepped out of the front door. As he raised his gun and pointed it at the armored vehicle, a sniper located 70 yards away shot him. The bullet entered his side and pierced his ribcage, heart, liver and stomach. Blood spread over his white T-shirt. One expert shot and Dean was dead.

Next page: Dean couldn't admit what he'd done in Afghanistan