Army Staff Sgt. William R. Wilson III, 27, was killed by an Afghan Local Policeman on March 26, 2012 in Paktika province. (Courtesy of Kim Wilson)
Army Staff Sgt. William R. Wilson III, 27, was killed by an Afghan Local Policeman on March 26, 2012 in Paktika province. (Courtesy of Kim Wilson)
Army Staff Sgt. William R. Wilson III, 27, was killed by an Afghan Local Policeman on March 26, 2012 in Paktika province. (Courtesy of Kim Wilson)
After Army Staff Sgt. William R. Wilson III, 27, was killed by an Afghan Local Policeman on March 26, his unit renamed their patrol base "PB Wilson" in Paktika province. (Courtesy of Kim Wilson)
Sgt. William R. Wilson III, 27Killed March 26, 20122nd Battalion, 28th Infantry Regiment, Grafenwoehr, Germany
For Bill Wilson, his son’s death in an insider attack has left him with questions he knows he’ll probably never get answered.
“How could this happen?” he said.
His namesake, Sgt. Billy Wilson, was shot three times in the face and neck by an Afghan local policeman on March 26, 2012, in Paktika province. Wilson, 27, was on his third combat tour. He’d been home on leave celebrating his birthday just a month earlier, Bill Wilson said, choking back tears.
The increasingly rampant insider attacks “are hard to fathom,” he said. “If we’re over there to help them why are they turning on us?”
He said his son told him they were sleeping with their guns, and “you can’t blame them.”
He and his wife, Kimberly, have been struggling with their son’s death. Kimberly just recently went back to work, and Bill has taken time off from his work as a truck driver. Being behind the wheel of an 80,000-pound truck in his state of mind “isn’t a good thing.”
“It’s hard, because [my son] loved doing what he did,” Wilson said. “He would go the extra length to help you.”
