By Kimberly Dozier
Last July, just over a year ago, Green Beret Tim Brumit made the wrong call.
Thinking he saw a drowning girl in stormy seas a short distance from his boat, he dove into the choppy surf, but misjudged the depth—and instantly broke his neck. The missing girl was later found safe on shore.
Now paralyzed from the chest down, Sergeant First Class Brumit is being forced to endure a whole new kind of hardship.
The U.S. Army just informed him that it judged his actions on that July day reckless due to alcohol and drugs. Now the veteran of hundreds of raids and deadly firefights in eight combat tours in Afghanistan and Iraq is fighting to save his military career. He has roughly three weeks to get the Army’s decision overturned or face a possible “other-than-honorable” discharge from service and possible loss of his military medical care.
Speaking exclusively to The Daily Beast, the 33-year-old Brumit admits the facts on the surface are against him. He had 0.1 percent blood alcohol in his system at the time of the injury, though that wasn’t illegal because he wasn’t driving, just sitting on a boat with friends.
Worse, Brumit’s hospital toxicology report showed traces of cocaine and amphetamines in his system, and an Army buddy told investigators he’d seen an apparent drug dealer at Brumit’s condo the night before selling other members of Brumit’s unit a white powdered substance.
“I’m going to take responsibility for the fact that I had a coping problem” that he dealt with by drinking and sometimes taking drugs, Brumit told The Daily Beast. “But the day of the injury, I had not used anything, and I wasn’t even drunk.”
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Source: The Daily Beast (Exclusive)
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