Authorities apprehend troubled veteran after standoff
SAN BENITO — A retired U.S. Air Force sergeant surrendered Thursday after he barricaded himself in his home and threatened to kill himself during a three-hour standoff with police, authorities said.
A Cameron County SWAT team used a battering ram to open the door of the house before a police negotiator talked Alex Leal, 39, into surrendering about 11 a.m.
"He told me, ‘I'm going to barricade myself and burn the house and then we won't have any more problems,'" his wife, Bobbie Jo Garcia, said after the incident. "He was just stressing and stressing because he has no income."
Leal threatened to douse the home with gasoline and set himself on fire, his wife said.
Police won't pursue criminal charges, police Lt. Martin Morales said.
Authorities took Leal to Valley Baptist Medical Center in Harlingen for evaluation, said Detective Art Flores, who talked Leal into surrendering.
Leal, an Operation Desert Storm veteran, is undergoing psychiatric treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder, Garcia said.
She called police about 8 a.m. after her husband barricaded himself inside their house at the corner of Wentz and Sombra streets, she said. She believes financial problems prompted her husband to "go crazy" and threaten to kill himself.
"Last night he thought he was back in the war," said Jesse Leal, the couple's 17-year-old son, who was wearing his grandfather's Purple Heart medal around his neck. "That's why the doors were barricaded. He trips out because of (post-traumatic stress disorder). He feels he's still in the war. He hears things, he sees things."
Flores, who said he coached Jesse Leal on a pee-wee football team, said his relationship with Alex Leal may have helped lead to the surrender.
"I said, ‘I don't want to harm you. You know who I am. We just want to get you the help you want,'" said Flores, who said he is also a Desert Storm veteran.
"I know what he's dealing with," Flores said, referring to post-traumatic stress disorder. "I came back traumatized from that war. He has some problems that he finds makes it difficult to cope with life right now."
Alex Leal remained at Valley Baptist Medical Center on Thursday afternoon, his wife said. She wants the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs to give her husband 90 days of psychiatric treatment at a San Antonio veterans hospital.
The VA hasn't compensated her husband for post-traumatic stress that has left him unable to work, she said, noting the couple owns two beauty salons. Instead, the government put her husband on a waiting list of veterans seeking benefits.
"I'm pleading with the VA to help him," Garcia said. "By the time he gets off the waiting list, he'll kill me or himself."
The VA clinic in Harlingen is reviewing Alex Leal's case, said Mario Martinez, an official with the clinic's police department.
"We just want to make sure he's receiving proper medical care," Martinez said. He could not disclose further details about the case.
Alex Leal was in charge of a unit that built missiles made with depleted uranium to load on the A-10 Thunderbolt II aircraft, Leal said in an interview last month.
At that time, he carried his handwritten diary that told the story of bombing raids he survived during Desert Storm.
"We're a very patriotic family but this is something that makes me feel my country let me down," Alex Leal said during the interview, referring to the government's delay in granting his benefits.
"I'm not the man I was before (the war). I'm like a walking zombie," he said at that time. "If I had to do it again, I would, because I love my country. But I just want the government to love me back."
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Fernando Del Valle is reporter for the Valley Morning Star.
