Baku-APA A US army sergeant accused of killing four soldiers and a navy officer has pleaded guilty to murder charges, helping him evade the death penalty, APA reports quoting Press TV.
Army Sergeant John Russell confessed to the Camp Liberty killings during a military court session at Joint Base Lewis-McChord in the US state of Washington on Monday.
“I just did it out of rage, sir,” he told Conn, adding that “What I remember most was I just wanted to kill myself. One hundred percent, I had decided to kill myself.”
Russell’s statement helped convince Judge David Conn in issuing a life-term in prison instead of the death penalty - the maximum punishment for such crimes.
The shooting, in which five American troops were killed and three others wounded, took place in May 2009 after the 44-year-old soldier was admitted to the mental health facilities in the US base in Baghdad during the Iraq War.
Two medical evaluations revealed that Russell suffered from severe depression with psychotic features and chronic Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), after having served nearly three tours.
The incident marks the largest mass killing by a service member during the Iraq War.
In 2012, the Veterans Administration revealed that nearly 30 percent of its patients who fought in Iraq and Afghanistan had PTSD.
Service members who were deployed multiple times to Iraq and Afghanistan are three times more likely to develop PTSD and major depression compared to soldiers with no previous deployments, according to a 2010 study published by the American Journal for Public Health.
The suicide rate for American troops has also increased over the past decade to average nearly one a day, prompting then former-Defense Secretary Leon Panetta in 2012 to declare it an epidemic.
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