A son, and mother, cry out for help

Christopher Wentworth’s mom carries the stoic look of a woman, who through the prism of a mother’s love, has watched her son absorb much tougher and less forgiving vagaries of life than he now faces.

I mean, after your son has spent a tour of duty getting shot at in Iraq where thousands of U.S. serviceman and women have already died  trying to give that forlorn excuse for democracy a fighting chance, what’s a couple of assault charges.

At least you know he’s not going to get killed by some IED while trucking explosives to an Army outpost, or murdered by some teenage, crazed, Al Qaida-inspired sniper lurking behind a sand dune.

While in Iraq as a National Guardman, Wentworth delivered ordnance in a semi-tractor trailer to combat installations throughout the country.

For Wentworth’s mom (who asked not to be identified), her son’s rampage in the Hannaford parking lot at the Lilac Mall on Tuesday was more of a “cry for help” than the actions of a madman. (See earlier stories, Top Stories section)

You see Christopher suffers from Post-Traumatic Stress Syndrome, or PTSD, a disease that first drew attention during the Vietnam War.

Christopher got home from Iraq in 2005 and seemed OK, his mom said, but a few years later he told her of his difficulty dealing with life back home after what he’d been through over there.

“He always said he had to separate that life from this life to survive,” she said on the steps of the Dover District Court a few minutes after her son’s video arraignment on Wednesday.

She said a little more than a year ago, the Army diagnosed Christopher with PTSD and began paying him a disability check.

She said they prescribed medication to help him cope with the distress, but she didn’t know whether he had stopped taking it or whether the symptoms just grew worse.

She said since the medication and other treatment he’d been doing well until Tuesday.

“Something snapped,” she said. “He’s never been in trouble. He’s not the robber they say he is.”

She complained that Channel 9 of Manchester, N.H., had dealt unfairly with the story of her son’s behavior on Tuesday, and said they didn’t take the time to get the story right.”

She said her son lives near the Hannaford’s, doesn’t have a car and walks there often to get groceries.

She said the “crow-bar” object police say he swung at several men in the parking lot is actually a 2-foot stick he carried with him to protect himself from a neighborhood dog.

As far as her son’s suit and tie clothing the day of the melee, she said that’s very unlike him, that he usually wears jeans and a T-shirt.

She said she knows he did something bad, but he’s not bad, and hopes he’ll come home to her once again soon.