TROUBLED,
VIOLENT VETS
TEST THE
JUSTICE SYSTEM
By David Wood
Photographed by Ryan Smith
Illustration by Mirko Ilic
JAMIE BEAVERS is a clean-cut,
32-year-old Catholic from south
Philly. As a kid, he shot hoops
to avoid the neighborhood drug
toughs. He became a high school
basketball star and won a full university scholarship. He played varsity until an injury sidelined him
and the scholarship was withdrawn.
At loose ends, he enlisted in the
Army in 2003 and was sent twice
to Iraq, spending 27 months in
combat and enduring multiple IED
blasts and other trauma. He came
home with Traumatic Brain Injury
and Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder and an addiction to the pills
that medics in Iraq had provided
to keep him going.
This past February, he was arrested and thrown in jail, sick,
alone and hopeless. His wife,
terrified of his nightmares and
drug habit, had fled with their
two girls. His brain injuries had
dimmed his ability to think and
speak, and left him so dizzy he often had to walk with a cane.
“Seems like I’m a 10 year-old
kid in a 30-year-old body,” he
said. “I just lost a lot of things
people take for granted. And I became an addict of opiates. It just