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    John Kinsel Sr., Navajo Code Talker During World War II, Dies at 107

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    Mr. Kinsel, who served from October 1942 to January 1946, was part of the second group of Marines trained as code talkers at Camp Elliott, Calif., after the original 29 who developed the code for wartime use.John Kinsel Sr., a World War II veteran who was one of the last surviving Navajo Code Talkers, a group of Marines whose encrypted wartime messages based on the Navajo language helped secure an Allied victory in the Pacific, died on Saturday. He was 107.Buu Nygren, president of the Navajo Nation, announced Mr. Kinsel’s death in a post on social media. No cause was given.An estimated 400 Navajo Code Talkers served during World War II, transmitting a code crafted from the Navajo language that U.S. forces used to confuse the Japanese and communicate troop movements, enemy positions and other critical battlefield information. Mr. Kinsel, who served from October 1942 to January 1946, was part of the second group of Marines trained as code talkers at Camp Elliott in California, after the original 29 who developed the code for wartime use.The code was never broken. A fictionalized version of the codetalkers’ story was depicted in the film “Windtalkers,” directed by John Woo.In an interview in 2019 with The Arizona Republic, Mr. Kinsel remembered training alongside 25 other marines at Camp Elliott, and he recalled working with some of the original 29 to develop additional code, including by working on code words for military words like “tank” and “aircraft.”Mr. Kinsel was assigned to the Ninth Marine Regiment, Third Marine Division, and took part in the battles of Bougainville (in Papau New Guinea), Guam and Iwo Jima. He was never deployed to the front lines, according to the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, but he worked with his division headquarters while on Bougainville Island to develop code and transcribe messages.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Daniel Penny’s Lawyers Will Ask to Throw Out Chokehold Charge in N.Y.C. Subway Death Case

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      Mr. Penny’s subway-car struggle with a homeless man, Jordan Neely, ended in death. On Thursday, his lawyers will also ask a judge to exclude video of Mr. Penny discussing the encounter.Minutes after a subway rider named Daniel Penny choked Jordan Neely in a train car in May 2023, Mr. Penny stood inside the Broadway-Lafayette Street station in Manhattan telling officers, “I just put him out.”Mr. Penny was recorded on body-worn camera explaining to officers that Mr. Neely, a homeless man, had entered an F train and thrown his possessions on the ground, and that he was “was very aggressive, going crazy.”“He’s like: ‘I’m ready to go to prison for life. I’m ready to die, I’m ready to die,’” Mr. Penny told an officer, according to court filings from prosecutors. “And I was standing behind him. I think I might have just put him in a choke, put him down. We just went to the ground. He was trying to roll up. I had him pretty good. I was in the Marine Corps.”Last year, Mr. Penny, who is from Long Island, was charged with second-degree manslaughter and criminally negligent homicide by the Manhattan district attorney’s office, and jury selection for his trial is scheduled to begin on Oct. 21. In a hearing on Thursday, lawyers for Mr. Penny asked a judge to suppress the comments he made to officers at the subway station and later at a precinct house, and to dismiss the indictment against him.When the video of the encounter spread online last year, it reverberated through the nation. The chokehold was captured in a four-minute video that showed Mr. Penny with his arms around Mr. Neely’s neck and his legs wrapped around his body. Mr. Neely struggled against Mr. Penny’s restraint as two other men stepped in to hold him down.Mr. Penny cooperated with officers who came to the scene and arrested him after Mr. Neely died, even going back to the Fifth Precinct to speak with them, his lawyers said in court filings. However, his statements followed what they argued was an illegal arrest.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      For Americans Haunted by Beirut Bombings, a Killing Resurfaces Decades of Pain

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      Two deadly bombings in Beirut, Lebanon, that killed scores of U.S. military personnel more than 40 years ago have cast a long shadow over survivors and victims’ families.A day after the killing of a senior Hezbollah member seen as a key figure in those attacks, many of those Americans welcomed the news but said it stirred painful memories without resolving the past.“It doesn’t bring closure,” said Michael Harris, 59, a Marine veteran who was “blown out” of his barracks in one of the attacks and lives today in Rhode Island. “It wasn’t just one person responsible.”The senior Hezbollah commander Ibrahim Aqeel was killed on Friday after Israeli fighter jets bombed a heavily residential area of Beirut’s southern suburbs. Mr. Aqeel has been long been wanted by the United States for his role in two 1983 bombings in Beirut that killed over 350 people, most of them U.S. service members. The United States had placed a multimillion-dollar bounty on his head, but he had survived multiple assassination attempts.The first attack, a bombing of the U.S. Embassy in Beirut in April 1983, killed 63 people, including 17 Americans. Six months later, a suicide bomber drove a truck packed with explosives into the U.S. Marine Corps barracks in Beirut, killing more than 300 people, including 241 American service members.For many survivors and victims’ loved ones, those bombings never go away.Every time Mr. Harris picks up the paper or watches the news about another bombing, he said, “it opens up wounds.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Ex-Marine Sentenced to Nearly 5 Years for Role in Jan. 6 Riot

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      Tyler Bradley Dykes was charged with assaulting law enforcement after prosecutors said he stole a police officer’s riot shield to help break into the Capitol.A South Carolina man who was serving in the United States Marine Corps when he stormed the United States Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, and stole a police officer’s riot shield to help break into the building was sentenced on Friday to nearly five years in prison, according to federal prosecutors.The man, Tyler Bradley Dykes, 26, who was previously convicted of a felony for his actions while marching in the 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Va., was sentenced by Judge Beryl A. Howell of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia to four years and nine months in prison for assaulting law enforcement during the 2021 riot, the U.S. Department of Justice said.“His actions and the actions of others disrupted a joint session of the U.S. Congress convened to ascertain and count the electoral votes related to the 2020 presidential election,” the department said.Prosecutors said that Mr. Dykes moved fences to help other members of the crowd get to the Capitol doors, helped push officers back from their posts, gave a Nazi salute, stole a police riot shield and used it to help break into the Capitol.They recommended that Mr. Dykes, who is from Bluffton, S.C., receive a sentence of five years and three months.Lawyers for Mr. Dykes asked for a sentence of two years, arguing that he had acknowledged his wrongdoing when he pleaded guilty in April to the assault charges, that he was only 22 years old at the time of the riot, and that he had enlisted in the Marine Corps to serve his country.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Ex-Engineer Charged With Obstructing Inquiry Into Military Crash That Killed 16

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      James Michael Fisher, 67, was arrested on charges that he made false statements during a criminal investigation into a the crash of a Marine Corps aircraft in Mississippi in 2017, the Justice Department said.A former U.S. Air Force engineer has been charged with making false statements and obstructing justice during a federal criminal investigation into a 2017 military plane crash that killed 16 people, the Justice Department said Wednesday.The engineer, James Michael Fisher, 67, formerly of Warner Robins, Ga., had been living in Portugal when he was arrested Tuesday morning on an indictment issued by a federal grand jury in the Northern District of Mississippi, the department said in a news release. He is charged with two counts each of making false statement charges and obstruction of justice. If convicted, could receive up to 20 years in prison.According to the department, Mr. Fisher, a former lead propulsion engineer at the Warner Robins Air Logistics Complex, “engaged in a pattern of conduct intended to avoid scrutiny for his past engineering decisions related to why the crash may have occurred.” He also “knowingly concealed key engineering documents” from investigators and “made materially false statements” to them about his decisions, the department said.The Justice Department did not specify a cause of the crash, which took place on July 10, 2017, in the Mississippi Delta when a U.S. Marine Corps KC-130 aircraft known as Yanky 72 crashed near Itta Bena, Miss., killing 15 members of the Marine Corps and a Navy corpsman. Witnesses at the time said the plane had disintegrated in the air as it neared the ground, prompting an urgent rescue effort in one of the South’s most rural areas. The authorities estimated the debris field was about three miles in diameter.The Justice Department did not immediately respond to a request for further information on Wednesday evening, and court documents could not immediately be obtained. It was unclear if Mr. Fisher had legal representation. The Warner Robins Air Logistics Complex also did not immediately respond to requests for comment on Wednesday evening. Alain Delaquérière More

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      World War II Veteran Dies at 102 While Traveling to D-Day Event in France

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      Robert Persichitti witnessed the raising of the U.S. flag at Iwo Jima. He died at a hospital in Germany.A World War II Navy veteran who witnessed the raising of the U.S. flag at Iwo Jima died while traveling to France to participate in an event commemorating D-Day, a veterans organization said.Robert Persichitti, 102, died Friday, said Richard Steward, president of the Honor Flight Rochester, a veteran’s organization that Mr. Persichitti belonged to. Mr. Persichitti, of Fairport, N.Y., was among the dwindling number of his generation still attending D-Day celebrations.According to WHEC News 10, an NBC affiliate in Rochester, N.Y., Mr. Persichitti flew overseas with a group connected to the National World War II Museum and a companion, whom the organization identified as Al DeCarlo. He was on his way to celebrate the 80th anniversary of the Allied invasion of Normandy, France, known as D-Day, which turned the tide of World War II in Europe.But Mr. Persichitti suffered a medical emergency while aboard a ship sailing toward Normandy, where the celebration was being held, and was airlifted to a hospital in Germany, WHEC 10 reported.Mr. Persichitti had a history of heart problems, but his death was not expected, Mr. Stewart said. “He died peacefully, and he did not die alone,” he said.According to Stars and Stripes, the U.S. military news organization, Mr. Persichitti served in Iwo Jima, Okinawa and Guam as a radioman second class on the command ship U.S.S. Eldorado. He was named to the New York State Senate’s Veterans Hall of Fame in 2020.Mr. Persichitti watched the raising of an American flag atop Mount Suribachi on Iwo Jima.Joe Rosenthal/Associated Press“I served in the Pacific for 15 months aboard a ship,” Mr. Persichitti said in a 2022 interview with WDSU, an NBC affiliate in New Orleans. He said he helped handle “all the communications for the two operations: Iwo Jima and Okinawa.”Stars and Stripes reported that Mr. Persichitti was on the deck of the Eldorado when he witnessed the raising of an American flag atop Mount Suribachi on Iwo Jima on Feb. 23, 1945, a moment depicted in one of the most famous photos in American history.Mr. Persichitti later returned to Mount Suribachi in 2019. “When I got to the island today, I just broke down,” he told Stars & Stripes in a 2019 interview.Mr. Stewart described Mr. Persichitti active and sharp, even at 102.“He was a fit and upright and got around, and had the complete faculties of someone who would be decades younger,” Mr. Stewart said. “He was really something.” More

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      J. Gary Cooper, Pathbreaking Marine Leader, Is Dead at 87

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      He was the first Black officer to lead a Marine Corps infantry company into combat. He later became an Alabama state lawmaker and an assistant secretary of the Air Force.J. Gary Cooper, a two-star general and the first African American to lead a Marine infantry company in combat, who later became an Alabama state lawmaker, an assistant secretary of the Air Force and an ambassador to Jamaica, died on April 27 at his home in Mobile, Ala. He was 87.His death was confirmed by his daughter Joli Claire Cooper.Growing up in Alabama in the 1930s and ’40s, General Cooper overcame the harsh segregation of the Deep South to attain leadership roles in the military, corporate America and government, a sweeping arc that paralleled the paths of a generation of African Americans that pushed open doors during a time of profound racial change in the United States.General Cooper was raised in Mobile in a rarefied world: the Black upper class of the pre-civil rights era. His family owned an insurance company and a funeral home. But money did not insulate him from the strictures of Jim Crow and its long racist shadow.When his father tried to send him to an all-white Roman Catholic school, the local bishop barred him. When he returned to Mobile to run the family business after 12 years in the Marines, the Junior Chamber of Commerce rejected him as a member. And in 1973, when General Cooper went to the Mobile County Courthouse to obtain a marriage license, he was humiliated to find that Black couples were made to sign a “colored” register, separate from the one for white couples.His initial escape from the segregated city of his youth came in 1954 when he won a scholarship to Notre Dame, where he was one of only a handful of Black freshmen in a class of 1,500.“On campus there were no ‘colored’ or ‘white’ signs on the drinking fountains or bathroom doors,” General Cooper wrote in a reminiscence published in Notre Dame magazine in 2014. “I thought I had died and gone to heaven.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Chuck Mawhinney, 74, Dies; Deadliest Sniper in Marine Corps History

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      He put the experience behind him after he returned from the Vietnam War. But fame finally caught up to him in the 1990s.Chuck Mawhinney, whose ability to creep through the dense jungle and looming elephant grass of South Vietnam and then wait for hours with his scoped rifle to pick off an enemy soldier made him the deadliest sniper in the history of the Marine Corps, died on Feb. 12 in Baker City, a town in the northeastern corner of Oregon. He was 74.His death was announced by Coles Funeral Home in Baker City. No further details were available.Mr. Mawhinney, who served in Vietnam from May 1968 to March 1970, had 106 confirmed kills and another 216 probable kills, averaging about four a week — more than the average company, which comprised about 150 soldiers.Among American military snipers, only Chris Kyle, a Navy SEAL who served in Iraq and had 160 confirmed kills, and Adelbert Waldron, an Army sniper during the Vietnam War with 109 kills, had higher numbers than Mr. Mawhinney.As a sniper, Mr. Mawhinney filled a number of roles. He would stay up all night with his rifle and night scope, watching the perimeter of an encampment for incursions. He would go out on patrol with other Marines, ready to support them if a firefight broke out. But mostly he and his spotter, a novice sniper who helped him identify targets, went out alone, looking for individual targets to kill as a way of sapping enemy morale.Most of his kills came slowly, a single shot from his bolt-action M40 after hours of waiting. But some came in bursts: On the night of Feb. 14, 1969, Mr. Mawhinney watched as a column of North Vietnamese soldiers crossed a shallow river near Da Nang, making their way toward a Marine encampment. He started firing, quickly but methodically, and in 30 seconds he had killed 16. The rest retreated.He claimed no special talent as a sniper, just the willingness to put in endless hours of practice. But he also demonstrated an unusual ability to tolerate grueling hours of stillness hiding in the jungle, alert for targets while bugs and snakes crawled over him.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More