Injured vet spent days at work, nights at protest
 

Guess they arent just a bunch of unemployed hippies looking for a handout.....


OAKLAND, Calif. ? The Iraq War veteran injured during a clash between police and anti-Wall Street protesters this week wasn't taking part in the demonstrations out of economic need.

The 24-year-old Scott Olsen makes a good living as a network engineer and has a nice apartment overlooking San Francisco Bay. And yet, his friends say, he felt so strongly about economic inequality in the United States that he fought for overseas that he slept at a protest camp after work.

"He felt you shouldn't wait until something is affecting you to get out and do something about it," said friend and roommate Keith Shannon, who served with Olsen in Iraq.

It was that feeling that drew him to Oakland on Tuesday night, when the clashes broke out and Olsen's skull was fractured. Fellow veterans said Olsen was struck in the head by a projectile fired by police, although the exact object and who might have been responsible for the injury have not been definitively established.

On Tuesday night, Olsen had planned to be at the San Francisco protest, but he changed course after his veterans' group decided to support protesters in Oakland after police cleared an encampment outside City Hall.

"I think it was a last-minute thing," Shannon said.

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Joshua Shepherd, 27, a Navy veteran who was standing nearby when Olsen got struck, said he didn't know what hit him. "It was like a war zone," he said.

A video posted on YouTube showed Olsen being carried by other protesters through the tear gas, his face bloodied. People shout at him: "What's your name? What's your name?" Olsen just stares back.

Shepherd said it's a cruel irony that Olsen is fighting an injury in the country that he fought to protect.

People at OPSWAT, the San Francisco security software company where Olsen works, were devastated after learning of his injuries. They described him as a humble, quiet man.

Olsen had been helping to develop security applications for U.S. defense agencies, building on expertise gained while on active duty in Iraq, said Jeff Garon, the company's director of marketing.

Olsen was awarded seven medals while serving in the U.S. Marine Corps, which he left as a lance corporal in November 2009 after serving for four years. One of them was the Navy-Marine Corps Achievement Medal.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/45071048.../#.Tqr1QkcRacF

you don't get a pass to break the law just because you served.

they decided to go to oakland instead of san fran because they were looking for trouble.


found it!

He's probably not the smartest...

Reminder - no matter how much you love your country, it don't love you back. Shit it hardly likes you.

What law was he breaking exactly?

Aggravated getting in the way of a rubber bullet.

All of this chaos makes me feel like things are unraveling in the world to our own demise :(

Humm he hasn't been arrested for breaking any laws.. However being you are resident "Expert" on everything maybe you can tell us why the police failed to charge him with anything despite obviously knowing who he is by now and where he was not to mention what he was doing.

Please inform us master whom shit quarters out his ass, what laws did he break and why did the police force fail to arrest him?

Arresting him would serve no purpose but to piss people off. The law he broke was a failure to disperse.

He was taught a lesson far greater than arresting him.
I love it