Two men found dead at Fort Bragg: Update
The mystery around the deaths of Master Sgt. William J. Lavigne II, 37, and Army veteran Timothy Dumas deepens with the revelation that Lavigne was also involved in the death of Sgt. First Class Mark Leshikar, two years prior.
Best of friends, Lavigne reportedly shot Leshikar to death after he was allegedly attacked by Leshikar with a screwdriver. A screwdriver was discovered near the scene.
The Cumberland County Sheriff’s Office, which had jurisdiction, ruled it to be a “justifiable homicide” despite inconsistencies.
LC sends.
Do Delta Force operators have a license to kill? Green Beret death raises questions
By Jack Murphy
On Dec. 2, 2020, Master Sgt. William Lavigne and Timothy Dumas were found dead at a training site on Fort Bragg, North Carolina. The case is being investigated as a homicide, a spokesperson for Army Criminal Investigations Division told Connecting Vets.
Lavigne was a member of the Army’s elite counter-terrorism unit, Delta Force, and deployed to Afghanistan and Iraq. Dumas was an Army veteran who previously served as the property book officer at 7th Special Forces Group before serving in the same role at Fort Bragg for nine years, according to his LinkedIn profile.
While justice for the apparent killings of Lavigne and Dumas has yet to be delivered, another family is also seeking justice, and speaking out about another killing in 2018 in which Lavigne was involved.
Lavigne and Sgt. First Class Mark Leshikar were best friends. Leshikar was a member of 19th Special Forces Group and had previously deployed to Afghanistan and Tajikistan. He was also suffering from a traumatic brain injury due to an improvised explosive device detonating near him, which was why he was assigned to a desk job at Fort Bragg. He and Lavigne would talk and argue with one another like they were brothers, Leshikar’s sister Nicole Rick recalled in an interview with Connecting Vets.
Much more to view here: Radio.Com and here: Daily Mail
Thanks, LC.
Category: Army, Crime, Guest Link
Fort Bragg never a dull moment.
Yeah, kinda like Ft. Hood.
Ah, Fayette-Nam!
If the dude was a criminal, how did he get through all the checks and balances we have to detect and crush bad behavior? His leadership failed the Army and SOCOM. There must have been detectable signs and a record of misconduct. Nobody goes from zero to 100 in a day.
If he was not a criminal, then being involved in two homicides is a hell of a bad luck.
Lets hope this isn’t going to be like the SEAL escapades we have been seeing in the recent past.
PBO, huh? I smell a theft of gov’t goodies job.
As an ex-PBO that one had my radar tickling as well. Can’t help but wonder if the two of them were involved in some kind of criminal enterprise. Delta gets a lot of neat toys that are worth big $$ on the black market.
Odd, to say the least.
I remember when the initial portion of the story hit the news. Didn’t smell right then. And the new developments stick to high heaven.
Could they have been involved Romantically…
I found a slightly higher res picture of the Master Sergeant. I’m thinking that this might be a lot like the issues seen with the SEALs. These spec ops guys are spending more than half their careers down range. It’s not healthy to be doing back-to-back-to-back deployments.
Look at his awards and decs. He’s got at least two stars on the Afghanistan Campaign Medal, four on the Iraq, two on the Inherent Resolve, and one on the GWOT-EM. Though there can be overlap, that’s at least a half dozen deployments and as many as nine in a 19 year career. He’s got three overseas service ribbons and what looks to be at least six overseas service bars.
The only other time you see this is with people like Col Floyd Thompson who spent nine years as a POW.
Hardcore. All the articles raised more questions than they answered. And we may never know what all happened. It does seem that they did NOT kill one another. Also seems as if CID has dropped the ball too. And what’s up with the other charges that went “POOF”? That’s odd…real odd.
A damn shame that we have lost so many Warriors. Imma wid y’all too, on the number of deployments. That’s way too many. Now, even if he requested that many, (been known to happen), higher should have stepped in and said NO. IIRC during The Viet of The Nam Times, combat deployments had become limited by regs. Guess, that too, has changed with all of multiple wars that have been ongoing since 2001.
“Also seems as if CID has dropped the ball too.”
I have seen and heard of CID doing that on multiple occasions as well as them copulating proverbial chickens and poodles too!
MEh, even before 9/11 the deployment rate for Delta was comparable. I say this not because I ever served there but based on manpower slides I saw over the years.
I also smell stolen goodies from the PBO tie in. Hard to think it is coincidence.
“looks to be at least six overseas service bars”
OS bars would be on the other sleeve and rectangular.
The bars you see are hash marks, one for each three year hitch.
I count 5 thus 15+ years service.
I’m talking about the right sleeve. Zoom in and you can see he’s got a stack of overseas bars, but you can’t really see how many are there.
His “military right” sleeve is bare in the photo but
I assume there are OS bars out of sight.
His left sleeve has five hash marks. Sure we are looking at the same photo?
OK, I saved the photo and did some magic with it.
There are a few pixels of yellow on the right sleeve in a stack.
Based on spacing I count 7 bars. Thats a lot of six mo deployments.
Sorry for the old eyes….
No worries. You can really only get a whiff of the overseas bars from this photo.
Just by the campaign medals he’s been in our last three war zones for half of the numbered campaigns. Insanity.
Chopping the 12 month tours to 6 after
Vietnam was supposed to prevent something.
Not sure what in light of our recent wars.
It’s not insanity, it’s life in the post 9/11 military. I’m just a common Signal puke with 7 OSB’s and 4 stars on my Iraq Campaign Ribbon. It’s the norm.
Or line dudes that did two 15-monthers more or less back to back with another year in there somewhere later.