A U.S. Marine Corps athlete participates in the 2019 Marine Corps Trials track competition at Marine Corps Base Camp Pendleton, California, March 4, 2019. (U.S. Marine Corps/Cpl. Samantha Bray)
CAMP PENDLETON — Gunnery Sgt. Steven McKay spun his wheelchair around amid a sea of swarming defenders to score from the paint.
With spectators screaming "Go Marines!" from the bleachers at the field house, wheelchairs clashed, arms tangled and the race was on to the other side of the court where a player from the Defense Forces of Georgia scored a quick basket.
After two 20-minute halves, the Georgian wheelchair basketball team reigned supreme, winning 27-19 and securing the gold medal in the ninth annual Marine Corps Trials.
"It's disheartening," McKay, 33, of Fallbrook said Wednesday, March 6, after losing the game as a member of Wounded Warrior Battalion — West at Camp Pendleton. "At the same time, it was a good competition. They made better decisions. We made some mistakes and they capitalized on that and the score shows it."
Tulsa Police Department Sgt. Mike Parsons and the challenge coin that saved his life. (Photos courtesy of Mike Parsons)
Sgt. Mike Parsons should have died that day.
On the morning of July 3, 2018, the Tulsa, Oklahoma police officer was among a group of officers who stopped John Terry Chatman Jr. at a QuikTrip gas pump after noticing a discrepancy between the van Chatman was driving and his license plates.
Chatman was irate. The 34-year-old felon "challenged the officers' jurisdiction several times and asked the police officers to contact their superiors" until Parsons, a 25-year veteran of the department, arrived to support his fellow officers with a non-lethal pepper-ball gun, according to a timeline of the encounter
compiled by The Tulsa World and video footage from the scene.
"Less than 10 seconds" after Parsons loosed off a pepper ball, Chatman opened fire. As
captured on video by Tulsa police body cameras, Parsons was shot in the leg, and two fellow officers dragged him out of the kill zone.
D-Day veteran James McCue died a hero. About 500 strangers made sure of it.
"It's beautiful," Army Sgt. Pete Rooney said of the crowd that gathered in the cold and stood on the snow Thursday during McCue's burial. "I wish it happened for every veteran's funeral."
Veterans Day at the Meuse-Argonne American Cemetery, 11 November, 2018. (U.S. Army/Erich Backes)
A Lawrence, Massachusetts World War II veteran without any surviving family will be buried Thursday, and the community is asked to come together at his funeral.