Fellow vets, friends of slaying suspect struggle to make sense of killings

PHILADELPHIA (Tribune News Service) He went to war with a Marines regiment known as the Cannon Cockers, an artillery unit that rained explosive shells on the enemy in Iraq.

He didnt stay long less than three months in 2008. But Bradley Stone claimed he had been fully disabled by post-traumatic stress disorder and was taking medication as part of his mental health treatment.

Its clear he struggled with alcohol. And on the license for his second marriage, he listed his occupation as disabled veteran.

In a patch of woods not far from his Pennsburg, Pa., home on Tuesday afternoon, police found Stone dead of self-inflicted cutting wounds a gruesome end to a manhunt that began after he killed his ex-wife and five of her relatives in Montgomery County on Monday.

On Tuesday, service-veteran friends of Stone struggled to make sense of the killings. None condoned them. At the same time, they said, Stone was a man who suffered.

He saw war, said Seth Howard, 27, a Marines veteran who served in Iraq. How are you supposed to be healthy after that?

Howard stood at Vets for Vets, a nonprofit center located almost across the street from Stones house in Pennsburg. He said the two often talked about their combat experiences.

Stone, friends said, was a Marine through and through, a family man who happily lent a hand to shovel snow and a former sergeant who struggled with stress disorder and with physical injuries from carrying heavy backpacks in Iraq.

Vietnam veteran Clyde Hoch, 68, said he and Stone werent close, but he considered the younger man a pretty decent guy.

You cant condemn someone until you understand what they went through, he said.

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Fellow vets, friends of slaying suspect struggle to make sense of killings