thedrifter
03-29-06, 09:46 AM
Did ‘games’ go too far?
Aggressive water-survival training at issue in Iraq vet’s drowning
By Gidget Fuentes
Times staff writer
MARINE CORPS RECRUIT DEPOT SAN DIEGO — Apprehension hung in the air when Staff Sgt. Eric Howard and fellow drill instructors stepped into the swim tank.
The Aug. 1 morning training session began with a “game” of water polo and underwater hockey, and the DIs, all students preparing for an upcoming water-survival instructor course, weren’t happy.
Their first water polo session five days earlier had left them uneasy. The game, as was the case with underwater hockey, had a twist: During play, water instructors would act like drowning victims to teach students how to escape their holds.
Out of their comfort zone, some students felt as though they would drown. Rough handling by instructors during a two-week preparatory training known as “work-ups” was a “rite of passage” that seemed like harassment. At least two students had complained, so that morning the instructors gathered and spoke to them.
“They wanted to know if any of us had a problem with training,” Howard recalled. “After the first water polo session, a lot of the students weren’t happy with the training that we were doing in general.”
One staff sergeant “got out of the pool and he was crying, and he didn’t return to the pool. I was pretty shaken,” he said. Another student also refused to play.
What Howard didn’t know at the time was that this second student, Staff Sgt. Andrew Gonzales, would drown less than an hour later while an instructor tested him on an escape technique.
The work-ups were supposed to teach DIs life-saving techniques they would use to teach recruits how to survive in the water. Gonzales’ death — at age 30, and months after returning from an Iraq combat tour — is ironic: He drowned while learning to become a life-saver.
The investigation into his death pointed fingers at four Marines, including two instructors who handled Gonzales in the pool that morning.
Testimony from Howard and other students and instructors, taken March 16-17 during an Article 32 hearing for Staff Sgts. David J. Roughan and Fernando Galvan, raises serious questions about the lack of command oversight and overzealous training tactics some say go too far.
Roughan and Galvan, who face charges of manslaughter, negligent homicide and dereliction of duty in Gonzales’ death, are certified swim instructors and were in the pool working with Gonzales when he drowned.
Testimony showed that several students had raised a red flag, questioning instructors’ training methods and complaining about their aggressiveness. Each time, instructors reportedly reminded them the training was designed to be harder and tougher than they’d get at the official three-week Marine Corps Instructor for Water Survival course taught in nearby Coronado.
The work-ups would prepare them to pass that course, the students were told. It would prepare them to handle the strength of an unruly drowning victim. It was a message that defense attorneys pressed during two days of initial testimony.
But witnesses said they heard a completely different message: Suck it up. Quit complaining — or drop out.
Borderline training tactics
The water games and antics in the 50-meter pool made little sense to some students.
“I didn’t understand any of the training that was being conducted for underwater hockey and water polo,” Howard testified when questioned March 17 by lead prosecutor Maj. Henry Brezillac. “But the instructors … told us there was a method to the madness.”
Still, the students were apprehensive.
“We all talked about it in the locker room,” Howard said, adding that the company first sergeant “knew how the students felt about the training.”
For Staff Sgt. Benjamin Holmes, an infantry unit leader and DI, the water training was “worse” than his two tours of combat in Iraq.
“I’d never been so scared in my life,” Holmes testified March 16. “At no point in my life have I ever felt ... that my life was in so much jeopardy.”
Water polo “was pretty intense, sir, not a fun time,” he said. “We hated it. We didn’t want to do it.”
Staff Sgt. Robert Mayfield, another student in that class, called it a “rite of passage” but told the investigating officer, Lt. Col. Paul Starita, that he saw no training value.
Mayfield, a DI, said he didn’t press his concerns further after his complaint to his company first sergeant yielded no change.
“I figure it was accepted,” he said.
Prosecutors asked why no one pressed to stop it.
“I knew there’ve been times in my career where I didn’t understand things, but after a while it takes time to get it,” Howard said. “I thought that this training was going to help me with it, but at the time, I didn’t understand. I still don’t.”
As far as he saw, he said, instructors “knew what they were doing … [and] knew that the training was tough but it was going to benefit us.”
“Was it unsafe training?” asked Brezillac.
Howard paused.
He had heard Gonzales’ repeated cries for instructors to let him go.
“I don’t think a grown man should be in a pool screaming and yelling,” he replied. “The whole point behind being a rescuer is you’ve got to remain calm.”
Tough on each other
That is a basic tenet of the official Coronado course, taught by Expeditionary Warfare Training Group Pacific and regulated, in part, by Marine Corps Order 1510.125.
However, the work-ups at the depot had no official written standard operating procedures at the time of the drowning.
Schedules of training events were posted, but no existing regulations provided written guidance specifying what was allowed or prohibited.
A small section of instructors, assigned to Instructional Training Company, run water-survival training for all recruits, as well as DIs and other permanent personnel here.
Most existing regulations, even the Recruit Training Regiment order on water survival, focus heavily on recruit training but don’t address the prep course.
Neal Puckett, a defense attorney and retired lieutenant colonel, said Roughan, a 13-year veteran of the Corps, did all he could to prepare students for the intense Coronado course. “There’s no SOP, and there’s nothing to tell them how to do it,” Puckett said, noting how instructors “passed it down from generation to generation.”
He dismissed blame on Roughan and said Gonzales’ death was “an unfortunate accident.”
Testimony during the hearing — after which the investigating officer will forward recommendations on whether the matter should go to court-martial — revealed that water-survival instructors operated with separate unwritten standards for training and handling recruits, officers and noncommissioned officers.
The water polo and hockey games were rough-and-tumble matches. Several Marines testified that instructors — all of them staff NCOs — played more aggressively with other staff NCOs as well as each other than with those of other ranks.
Gunnery Sgt. Eric Alston first played water polo when he went through work-ups a year ago. “I thought it was out of control,” testified Alston, a DI and swim instructor. “We did play it, and when we did, it was very strict.”
He said instructors were gentler on officers. “I didn’t think anyone would grab him,” he said, referring to a specific officer.
When asked by Capt. Gabe Bass, Galvan’s defense attorney, why that was, Alston replied, “He’s a sir.”
Gunnery Sgt. Tim Sisson had heard complaints from several Marines about Roughan’s alleged rough treatment while he helped evaluate a Combat Water Safety Swimmer certification course last May in Coronado. Two students were injured — both suffered sprained necks, and one also had bruises.
“In my opinion, he was far too aggressive during their evaluation,” said Sisson, the lead swim instructor in Coronado, testifying by telephone March 17.
Sgt. Patrick O’Brien testified by telephone March 16 that he hurt his neck after a tight hold by Roughan. “It hurt me more than it should have,” he said.
Sisson said he took Roughan aside that day and explained that “evaluations are to evaluate students on their ability to properly execute the technique,” not hold them to the point where they’re running out of air and must tap out.
The ‘depot mentality’
Sisson, who was certified as a water-survival instructor in 1996 during a DI tour, blamed a “depot mentality” for injecting a competitive edge among instructors and DIs. It also translated to a high intensity level during water-survival training.
“[Roughan] was bringing over … the depot mentality,” he said. “We are rough with each other, as far as head holds” and other moves. “I can only assume he brought that with him” to the Coronado course, he added.
Starita, the investigating officer, asked him for explanation. “During the water polo games, we were more forceful with each other than instructors would be with students,” Sisson testified.
When asked about the purpose of the training, he said it had none, but he added, “maybe a depot check.”
In his first experience with the course in 1996, he said, it was “clean harmless fun during water polo at the depot.”
“We were hard on the students,” he said, “but not as hard as we are on each other.”
Sisson didn’t define what he meant by “depot mentality.” But some Marines see that as sowing bigger egos, a sense of entitlement and confidence typical among hard-charging, by-the-book DIs who hold coveted jobs in a high-profile assignment and are seen as poster Marines molding the next generation of leathernecks. Any sign of weakness or fault isn’t tolerated, so there’s little sympathy if someone can’t cut it.
Sisson admitted he acted that way.
“While I was at the depot, I felt I could do the course better than a Marine from a fleet unit,” he testified.
But when asked, he said he never counseled anyone about taking the depot mentality too far.
Talk of a “depot mentality” and “depot check” didn’t surprise Gonzales’ widow, however.
Understated throughout the hearing was the belief that Gonzales angered instructors when he complained about the water games and then refused to get in the pool.
Battling a cold or mild flu, he had been sent home early twice that first week of training, his widow, Michelle Gonzales, said.
But after a weekend trying to recuperate with rest and medicine, Gonzales showed up at the pool that Monday morning and told instructors he didn’t want to get in the pool.
“It was kicking his butt, and he was all exhausted,” she testified.
It’s not clear why he ultimately agreed to get in the water, but she and several students said he didn’t want to be dropped from the course.
“They gave him a hard time, [saying] just suck it up,” she added.
Rough play reported
A former student, Christopher Manella, suffered a neck strain after an incident with Roughan when he was evaluated in a rescue technique.
It should have gone smoothly — suck in air, tuck the chin into the chest and duck underwater, all in a single motion. “But I wasn’t able to tuck my chin in quick enough, so he grabbed me by the head,” Manella, 33, said in questioning by assistant prosecutor Capt. Alan Young.
At that point, Manella tried to release Roughan’s grip, done by pressing on a point along the upper arms of the “victim,” then wiggling out of his grasp.
But “he kept holding tighter and tighter and tighter,” he said. “In a sense, I kind of wrestled with him until I broke free. I was fighting to get out of his grasp. That was the hardest I’d ever been grabbed by an instructor.”
At 6 foot, 2 inches and 210 pounds, Manella is no lightweight. Swimming is his PT. “I do 3,000 to 4,000 meters a day,” he testified.
Puckett tried to show the rough handling with rescue techniques was meant to help prevent a drowning.
“With a normal drowning victim, they usually let go when you pull them underwater because that’s the last place they want to be,” said Manella, who’s worked as a lifeguard since age 11.
But with Roughan’s arms around him, “it came to the point where either I passed out or he ran out of air or I broke free.”
Lack of safeguards noted
The initial investigation pointed blame at the lack of safeguards at the swim tank. Among the problems: No safety officer remained on the deck during the early-morning swim games; the pool corpsman was in the water playing water polo and underwater hockey and not watching from topside; and two defibrillators weren’t working properly and the pool staff lacked training on how to use them.
But witnesses raised another safety issue: the lack of a “safety valve” for distressed students.
Whenever an instructor handles a student in the water, a tap by the student means he needs to get air or swim to the side of the pool. It’s the pool version of a timeout.
With a “tap out,” the instructor is supposed to let go and allow the student to catch his breath. That’s the rule in the MCIWS course taught at Coronado.
“If you couldn’t do [the rescue technique] and you tapped, they let you go,” Howard testified.
But that wasn’t the rule in work-ups. Instructors often kept their hold on a student, whether he needed air or panicked or had some other problem.
“When I was tapping, they wouldn’t let me go,” Howard said. “That was the main safety [issue] that I was concerned about.”
Howard recalled what it felt like when he wasn’t let go. “I know when I was gasping [for air] and I couldn’t perform the rescues, you just shut down physically and mentally,” he said.
“I just kept tapping until eventually I was let go.”
For the students, not releasing them caused more panic and gave them the sense that they that would drown.
Alston raised his concerns about the water games with other students and complained to the pool staff NCO-in-charge when instructors wouldn’t release him when he tapped out. “I didn’t see the reasoning,” he testified. He was told it was necessary because recruits freak out if they think they’re drowning. “If I was in charge,” he added, “I would change it.”
In the coming weeks, Roughan and Galvan will learn what, if any, their punishment will be. The depot’s commander, Brig. Gen. John Paxton, will decide what to do: Drop any or all charges, order nonjudicial punishment or send either or both to a court-martial.
In the meantime, Corps officials have launched a series of initiatives to revamp swim training this summer.
Still, it’s not over for the Marines involved in the Aug. 1 incident.
Two other Marines with the training company — Capt. Vincent Guida, its commander, and Staff Sgt. Duane Dishon, who was staff NCOIC at the time — face charges of dereliction of duty. No date for their Article 32 hearing has been set, although a depot spokesman, Maj. Joseph Kloppel, said it might be held in April.
And prosecutors and Paxton will have to decide if anyone else could be charged. Testimonies at the preliminary hearing for Roughan and Galvan raised questions about the actions and responsibilities of other instructors and staff in and around the pool at the time of the incident.
Several Marines who were scheduled to testify March 17 instead were read their rights by the investigating officer when he deemed that some evidence he heard could incriminate them.
“There’s a whole lot going on at the pool that was clearly outside of orders,” Starita told the attorneys in court March 17.
Ellie
Aggressive water-survival training at issue in Iraq vet’s drowning
By Gidget Fuentes
Times staff writer
MARINE CORPS RECRUIT DEPOT SAN DIEGO — Apprehension hung in the air when Staff Sgt. Eric Howard and fellow drill instructors stepped into the swim tank.
The Aug. 1 morning training session began with a “game” of water polo and underwater hockey, and the DIs, all students preparing for an upcoming water-survival instructor course, weren’t happy.
Their first water polo session five days earlier had left them uneasy. The game, as was the case with underwater hockey, had a twist: During play, water instructors would act like drowning victims to teach students how to escape their holds.
Out of their comfort zone, some students felt as though they would drown. Rough handling by instructors during a two-week preparatory training known as “work-ups” was a “rite of passage” that seemed like harassment. At least two students had complained, so that morning the instructors gathered and spoke to them.
“They wanted to know if any of us had a problem with training,” Howard recalled. “After the first water polo session, a lot of the students weren’t happy with the training that we were doing in general.”
One staff sergeant “got out of the pool and he was crying, and he didn’t return to the pool. I was pretty shaken,” he said. Another student also refused to play.
What Howard didn’t know at the time was that this second student, Staff Sgt. Andrew Gonzales, would drown less than an hour later while an instructor tested him on an escape technique.
The work-ups were supposed to teach DIs life-saving techniques they would use to teach recruits how to survive in the water. Gonzales’ death — at age 30, and months after returning from an Iraq combat tour — is ironic: He drowned while learning to become a life-saver.
The investigation into his death pointed fingers at four Marines, including two instructors who handled Gonzales in the pool that morning.
Testimony from Howard and other students and instructors, taken March 16-17 during an Article 32 hearing for Staff Sgts. David J. Roughan and Fernando Galvan, raises serious questions about the lack of command oversight and overzealous training tactics some say go too far.
Roughan and Galvan, who face charges of manslaughter, negligent homicide and dereliction of duty in Gonzales’ death, are certified swim instructors and were in the pool working with Gonzales when he drowned.
Testimony showed that several students had raised a red flag, questioning instructors’ training methods and complaining about their aggressiveness. Each time, instructors reportedly reminded them the training was designed to be harder and tougher than they’d get at the official three-week Marine Corps Instructor for Water Survival course taught in nearby Coronado.
The work-ups would prepare them to pass that course, the students were told. It would prepare them to handle the strength of an unruly drowning victim. It was a message that defense attorneys pressed during two days of initial testimony.
But witnesses said they heard a completely different message: Suck it up. Quit complaining — or drop out.
Borderline training tactics
The water games and antics in the 50-meter pool made little sense to some students.
“I didn’t understand any of the training that was being conducted for underwater hockey and water polo,” Howard testified when questioned March 17 by lead prosecutor Maj. Henry Brezillac. “But the instructors … told us there was a method to the madness.”
Still, the students were apprehensive.
“We all talked about it in the locker room,” Howard said, adding that the company first sergeant “knew how the students felt about the training.”
For Staff Sgt. Benjamin Holmes, an infantry unit leader and DI, the water training was “worse” than his two tours of combat in Iraq.
“I’d never been so scared in my life,” Holmes testified March 16. “At no point in my life have I ever felt ... that my life was in so much jeopardy.”
Water polo “was pretty intense, sir, not a fun time,” he said. “We hated it. We didn’t want to do it.”
Staff Sgt. Robert Mayfield, another student in that class, called it a “rite of passage” but told the investigating officer, Lt. Col. Paul Starita, that he saw no training value.
Mayfield, a DI, said he didn’t press his concerns further after his complaint to his company first sergeant yielded no change.
“I figure it was accepted,” he said.
Prosecutors asked why no one pressed to stop it.
“I knew there’ve been times in my career where I didn’t understand things, but after a while it takes time to get it,” Howard said. “I thought that this training was going to help me with it, but at the time, I didn’t understand. I still don’t.”
As far as he saw, he said, instructors “knew what they were doing … [and] knew that the training was tough but it was going to benefit us.”
“Was it unsafe training?” asked Brezillac.
Howard paused.
He had heard Gonzales’ repeated cries for instructors to let him go.
“I don’t think a grown man should be in a pool screaming and yelling,” he replied. “The whole point behind being a rescuer is you’ve got to remain calm.”
Tough on each other
That is a basic tenet of the official Coronado course, taught by Expeditionary Warfare Training Group Pacific and regulated, in part, by Marine Corps Order 1510.125.
However, the work-ups at the depot had no official written standard operating procedures at the time of the drowning.
Schedules of training events were posted, but no existing regulations provided written guidance specifying what was allowed or prohibited.
A small section of instructors, assigned to Instructional Training Company, run water-survival training for all recruits, as well as DIs and other permanent personnel here.
Most existing regulations, even the Recruit Training Regiment order on water survival, focus heavily on recruit training but don’t address the prep course.
Neal Puckett, a defense attorney and retired lieutenant colonel, said Roughan, a 13-year veteran of the Corps, did all he could to prepare students for the intense Coronado course. “There’s no SOP, and there’s nothing to tell them how to do it,” Puckett said, noting how instructors “passed it down from generation to generation.”
He dismissed blame on Roughan and said Gonzales’ death was “an unfortunate accident.”
Testimony during the hearing — after which the investigating officer will forward recommendations on whether the matter should go to court-martial — revealed that water-survival instructors operated with separate unwritten standards for training and handling recruits, officers and noncommissioned officers.
The water polo and hockey games were rough-and-tumble matches. Several Marines testified that instructors — all of them staff NCOs — played more aggressively with other staff NCOs as well as each other than with those of other ranks.
Gunnery Sgt. Eric Alston first played water polo when he went through work-ups a year ago. “I thought it was out of control,” testified Alston, a DI and swim instructor. “We did play it, and when we did, it was very strict.”
He said instructors were gentler on officers. “I didn’t think anyone would grab him,” he said, referring to a specific officer.
When asked by Capt. Gabe Bass, Galvan’s defense attorney, why that was, Alston replied, “He’s a sir.”
Gunnery Sgt. Tim Sisson had heard complaints from several Marines about Roughan’s alleged rough treatment while he helped evaluate a Combat Water Safety Swimmer certification course last May in Coronado. Two students were injured — both suffered sprained necks, and one also had bruises.
“In my opinion, he was far too aggressive during their evaluation,” said Sisson, the lead swim instructor in Coronado, testifying by telephone March 17.
Sgt. Patrick O’Brien testified by telephone March 16 that he hurt his neck after a tight hold by Roughan. “It hurt me more than it should have,” he said.
Sisson said he took Roughan aside that day and explained that “evaluations are to evaluate students on their ability to properly execute the technique,” not hold them to the point where they’re running out of air and must tap out.
The ‘depot mentality’
Sisson, who was certified as a water-survival instructor in 1996 during a DI tour, blamed a “depot mentality” for injecting a competitive edge among instructors and DIs. It also translated to a high intensity level during water-survival training.
“[Roughan] was bringing over … the depot mentality,” he said. “We are rough with each other, as far as head holds” and other moves. “I can only assume he brought that with him” to the Coronado course, he added.
Starita, the investigating officer, asked him for explanation. “During the water polo games, we were more forceful with each other than instructors would be with students,” Sisson testified.
When asked about the purpose of the training, he said it had none, but he added, “maybe a depot check.”
In his first experience with the course in 1996, he said, it was “clean harmless fun during water polo at the depot.”
“We were hard on the students,” he said, “but not as hard as we are on each other.”
Sisson didn’t define what he meant by “depot mentality.” But some Marines see that as sowing bigger egos, a sense of entitlement and confidence typical among hard-charging, by-the-book DIs who hold coveted jobs in a high-profile assignment and are seen as poster Marines molding the next generation of leathernecks. Any sign of weakness or fault isn’t tolerated, so there’s little sympathy if someone can’t cut it.
Sisson admitted he acted that way.
“While I was at the depot, I felt I could do the course better than a Marine from a fleet unit,” he testified.
But when asked, he said he never counseled anyone about taking the depot mentality too far.
Talk of a “depot mentality” and “depot check” didn’t surprise Gonzales’ widow, however.
Understated throughout the hearing was the belief that Gonzales angered instructors when he complained about the water games and then refused to get in the pool.
Battling a cold or mild flu, he had been sent home early twice that first week of training, his widow, Michelle Gonzales, said.
But after a weekend trying to recuperate with rest and medicine, Gonzales showed up at the pool that Monday morning and told instructors he didn’t want to get in the pool.
“It was kicking his butt, and he was all exhausted,” she testified.
It’s not clear why he ultimately agreed to get in the water, but she and several students said he didn’t want to be dropped from the course.
“They gave him a hard time, [saying] just suck it up,” she added.
Rough play reported
A former student, Christopher Manella, suffered a neck strain after an incident with Roughan when he was evaluated in a rescue technique.
It should have gone smoothly — suck in air, tuck the chin into the chest and duck underwater, all in a single motion. “But I wasn’t able to tuck my chin in quick enough, so he grabbed me by the head,” Manella, 33, said in questioning by assistant prosecutor Capt. Alan Young.
At that point, Manella tried to release Roughan’s grip, done by pressing on a point along the upper arms of the “victim,” then wiggling out of his grasp.
But “he kept holding tighter and tighter and tighter,” he said. “In a sense, I kind of wrestled with him until I broke free. I was fighting to get out of his grasp. That was the hardest I’d ever been grabbed by an instructor.”
At 6 foot, 2 inches and 210 pounds, Manella is no lightweight. Swimming is his PT. “I do 3,000 to 4,000 meters a day,” he testified.
Puckett tried to show the rough handling with rescue techniques was meant to help prevent a drowning.
“With a normal drowning victim, they usually let go when you pull them underwater because that’s the last place they want to be,” said Manella, who’s worked as a lifeguard since age 11.
But with Roughan’s arms around him, “it came to the point where either I passed out or he ran out of air or I broke free.”
Lack of safeguards noted
The initial investigation pointed blame at the lack of safeguards at the swim tank. Among the problems: No safety officer remained on the deck during the early-morning swim games; the pool corpsman was in the water playing water polo and underwater hockey and not watching from topside; and two defibrillators weren’t working properly and the pool staff lacked training on how to use them.
But witnesses raised another safety issue: the lack of a “safety valve” for distressed students.
Whenever an instructor handles a student in the water, a tap by the student means he needs to get air or swim to the side of the pool. It’s the pool version of a timeout.
With a “tap out,” the instructor is supposed to let go and allow the student to catch his breath. That’s the rule in the MCIWS course taught at Coronado.
“If you couldn’t do [the rescue technique] and you tapped, they let you go,” Howard testified.
But that wasn’t the rule in work-ups. Instructors often kept their hold on a student, whether he needed air or panicked or had some other problem.
“When I was tapping, they wouldn’t let me go,” Howard said. “That was the main safety [issue] that I was concerned about.”
Howard recalled what it felt like when he wasn’t let go. “I know when I was gasping [for air] and I couldn’t perform the rescues, you just shut down physically and mentally,” he said.
“I just kept tapping until eventually I was let go.”
For the students, not releasing them caused more panic and gave them the sense that they that would drown.
Alston raised his concerns about the water games with other students and complained to the pool staff NCO-in-charge when instructors wouldn’t release him when he tapped out. “I didn’t see the reasoning,” he testified. He was told it was necessary because recruits freak out if they think they’re drowning. “If I was in charge,” he added, “I would change it.”
In the coming weeks, Roughan and Galvan will learn what, if any, their punishment will be. The depot’s commander, Brig. Gen. John Paxton, will decide what to do: Drop any or all charges, order nonjudicial punishment or send either or both to a court-martial.
In the meantime, Corps officials have launched a series of initiatives to revamp swim training this summer.
Still, it’s not over for the Marines involved in the Aug. 1 incident.
Two other Marines with the training company — Capt. Vincent Guida, its commander, and Staff Sgt. Duane Dishon, who was staff NCOIC at the time — face charges of dereliction of duty. No date for their Article 32 hearing has been set, although a depot spokesman, Maj. Joseph Kloppel, said it might be held in April.
And prosecutors and Paxton will have to decide if anyone else could be charged. Testimonies at the preliminary hearing for Roughan and Galvan raised questions about the actions and responsibilities of other instructors and staff in and around the pool at the time of the incident.
Several Marines who were scheduled to testify March 17 instead were read their rights by the investigating officer when he deemed that some evidence he heard could incriminate them.
“There’s a whole lot going on at the pool that was clearly outside of orders,” Starita told the attorneys in court March 17.
Ellie