PDA

View Full Version : U.S. Marine shot in Haiti gets Purple Heart



thedrifter
03-23-04, 05:59 AM
U.S. Marine shot in Haiti gets Purple Heart


By Sandra Jontz, Stars and Stripes
European edition, Saturday, March 20, 2004


The sole U.S. casualty in Haiti, a Marine shot and injured nearly a week ago, headed home Thursday after receiving a Purple Heart, officials said.

Pfc. Howard Hamilton, 20, of Murfreesboro, Tenn., was wounded Sunday while patrolling a Port-au-Prince neighborhood that is home to staunch supporters of ousted president Jean-Bertrand Aristide.

He received the medal while recuperating at a Miami hospital, said Capt. Teresa Ovalle, a spokeswoman with the 2nd Marine Division in Camp Lejeune, N.C.

“He’s doing fine and on his way, on convalescent leave, to his home with his parents,” Ovalle said Thursday. Hamilton, who joined the Corps on July 23, is a rifleman with the 3rd Battalion, 8th Marines.

Meanwhile, hostility toward the U.S.-led international force since Aristide’s ouster on Feb. 29 seems to have abated, and now comes only from “troublesome areas,” U.S. Marine Lt. Col. David Lapan, a spokesman for the multinational force, said in a telephone interview from Port-au-Prince.

“The hostility that we are facing has come from very particular areas, the most troublesome areas, the slums, those controlled by gangs and where the criminal element is,” Lapan said Thursday. “In the general population, we don’t see that. The hostility is confined to specific areas. … We’re patrolling those areas and lots of others. We’re really out and about.”

Roughly 2,800 U.S., French, Chilean and Canadian forces make up the multinational force working to bring stability to the Caribbean nation. It could increase to 5,000 troops before the United Nations takes over stabilization and peacekeeping operations in a few months, defense officials have said.

U.S. Marines will operate in the capital, Port-au-Prince, along with Chilean and Canadian forces, and are moving to the southern “claw,” or peninsula, to share jurisdiction with Canadian forces, Lapan said. The French are moving to the northern part of the island.

Part of the multinational interim force’s security and stabilization missions includes disarming Haitians bearing a weapon without a valid permit.

“But that’s not our primary mission, and people have to recognize that,” he said. “We’re an interim force … intended to be here for 90 days to set conditions for a follow-on force, assist the Haitian police in restoring security and stability and make sure humanitarian assistance can begin flowing again,” Lapan said.

That 90-day mission will cost the Navy an estimated $23 million, Navy Secretary Gordon England told a congressional panel Wednesday.

The Haitian national police recently voided all permits except two types: shotguns for security guards and .38-caliber handguns that businesses use for protection, Lapan said.

“We have not done any active collections, but we are confiscating [weapons] in one of three ways,” he explained. Marines have orders to take any weapon carried in the open and process it to determine if the carrier has one of the two permissible permits.

http://www.estripes.com/article.asp?section=104&article=20348&archive=true


Ellie