Michael J. Crutchfield takes own life

STOCKTON - A turbulent childhood at his heels, Michael J. Crutchfield was looking to find his way in life when he joined the Army.

His hopes, however, were tinged with thoughts that he would one day die in the military. He joked that perhaps it would happen parachuting from a plane, friends said.

But no one suspected the outwardly confident Crutchfield would commit suicide after being deployed to Iraq in July.

Crutchfield, 21, killed himself Saturday in Balad, Iraq, about 50 miles north of Baghdad, a spokesman for the Fort Bragg, N.C., Army base said.

The day of his death, he e-mailed his foster brother and confidant, Johnny Sotello, to relate his pain to the remnants of his family still living in the area.

"As you know, there are more people waiting for me to pull this trigger than there are waiting on my return to the states," Crutchfield wrote in a portion of the message intended for his mother.

"I'm done hurting. All my life I've been hurting ... end this pain," Crutchfield wrote at the end of his two-page message.

Crutchfield's death comes after an increase in military suicides and a report released last week by a team of mental health specialists whose key recommendations included that the Army develop a more focused suicide-prevention program for soldiers deployed to Iraq and Kuwait.

"What our soldiers are experiencing are the inherent stressors of combat that we would expect," Col. Edward Crandell, the team's leader and chief of the Department of Behavioral Health at the Army's Womack Medical Center at Fort Bragg, said in a written statement on the report. "It is therefore essential to identify and treat combat and operational stress on the battle-field."

Suicides among soldiers reached a rate of 19.9 per 100,000 soldiers, the team reported. In 2004, the rate was 18.8 per 100,000. The actual number of suicides was 22 in 2005, 11 in 2004 and 25 in 2003, The Associated Press reported.

The suicide rate for the United States' civilian population was 10.8 per 100,000 people in 2004, according to the National Center for Health Statistics.

All members of the U.S. armed forces go through mental health briefings before and after deployment, and can receive mental health assistance from medics and chaplains abroad, according to Army Capt. J. Elaine Hunnicutt.

Soldiers and their supervisors also are trained to recognize signs that a fellow soldier is in need of assistance, she said.

"We make every effort to ensure that our people are taken care of and do not endanger themselves or others if they have problems coping with the stresses of war," she said.

The nearly 1,500 soldiers surveyed for the report said they received suicide-prevention training before and during deployments.

They also said access to behavioral health care has improved, and more soldiers reported needing such care.

The report did not specify how or why access to care improved.

Leading suicide risk factors uncovered were relationship issues at home and in the theater of war, legal actions, problems with other soldiers, and command and duty performance, according to the Army Mental Health Advisory Team's report, the third since 2003.

Army Pfc. Jeff Ledesma, a Mountain View resident serving in Baghdad, said soldier suicides appear rare.

"I don't see it that often," Ledesma said by phone Thursday.

He said troops have well-publicized access to the chaplain's office.

"Basically, you can go in and talk to them when you want," Ledesma said.

But Crutchfield's friends said the soldier felt like he had no one to talk to.

In his last phone call to Angelina Sotello, Johnny Sotello's cousin, Crutchfield said he felt lonely and that no one cared, she said.

Crutchfield said that often, Sotello said, even when he was in the company of friends. He and Sotello attended school at French Camp School until sixth grade.

He did not talk about his childhood, even when asked, she said.

Exactly when Crutchfield entered foster care isn't clear. But he ended up living with Johnny Sotello in an apartment on North El Dorado Street as part of the independent living foster care program and attending the county's one.Alternative educational program.

Six months after his 17th birthday, he moved into the Duarte family's home in Stockton to finish school after the foster program ended.

The family never saw anything in him that would lead them to believe he would take his own life.

"We don't see what goes on over there, so we don't know what happened or what triggered him. Maybe it was just too much," Danielle Duarte said.

From the Record