A Soldier's Tragedy
By MARK THOMPSONIt didn't look like a war zone on the ground floor of the small white house in Superior, Wis. At midday on Aug. 18, the Crock-Pot was set to warm, slowly cooking dinner. Freshly washed clothes were in the dryer. An iPhone kept buzzing to life on the living-room couch. But upstairs, the appearance of tranquillity ended at the master-bedroom door. Behind it, a barefoot Matthew Magdzas, adrift ever since his 2007 return from Iraq, had emptied his 9-mm semiautomatic pistol into the people he loved most.
The first shots killed his 26-year-old wife April and their 13-month-old daughter Lila, who was in her playpen. April's sunglasses remained perched atop her head, a pacifier stuffed into her back pocket. Lila, in pink socks, was wearing a T-shirt that read SPANK GRANDMA - SHE SPOILED ME. Magdzas, 23, next turned his gun on the family's three dogs, killing them all. Then he put the pistol to his right temple and fired his 14th, and last, shot. (See the fervor over gun control after Tucson.)
There was one other victim that rainy summer day: the Magdzases' second daughter, Annah, who was in her mother's womb and due to be delivered by cesarean section the next day. When police arrived and saw that April was pregnant, they summoned an ambulance but canceled the call once they realized the baby had died along with her mother, sister and father. She appeared in the police report as "unborn victim - deceased."
When will we ever learn?
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