Point blank

It was a cool, clear night at Q-West base in northern Iraq, and Army Sgt. Dwayne Cole was restless. On his second tour of duty in Iraq, Sgt. Cole was counting the days — 37 — until he could return home to Brooklyn. He finished a late gym workout and was heading back to his bunk around 1 a.m. when he noticed some friends were still up in another combat housing unit (CHU).

Cole, a solidly built 28-year-old with an easy smile, stopped in to visit. His friends, two privates and another sergeant, were watching re-runs of CSI on television in the two-cot room. Cole picked up a car magazine and thumbed through it.

He began to relax, no easy feat given that he had survived two roadside bomb attacks on this tour alone. But the feeling was fleeting. Within minutes, Cole was on the floor with blood gushing from his neck. He had been shot — not by enemy fire, but at point-blank range by a member of his own unit.

The Army reported Cole’s shooting as a training accident. Another soldier, they said, had dropped a gun, it discharged, and Cole was the unfortunate victim. The incident went largely unnoticed beyond the sandy, isolated confines of Q-West. But according to documents and internal reports obtained by NBC News, one Army investigator wasn’t buying the training accident story. And before long, he called that account something quite different: “a cover-up.”

The shooting of Sgt. Cole raises a number of troubling questions: How interested was the Army initially in learning the truth about Cole’s shooting? What role, if any, did the strain of repeated tours of duty play? How was the gunman able to meet presidential candidate John McCain at a Washington ceremony after he admitted to, and was charged with, the shooting?

Cole barely survived the shooting. The young Army reservist is now paralyzed from the chest down. Nineteen months later, after repeated rounds of physical therapy, he still is trying to make sense of what happened that February night.

He and the shooter, Sgt. Thomas Prasenski, knew one another, trained together, and considered one another friends. Like Cole, Prasenski was a New Yorker. Both had served multiple tours of duty and witnessed firsthand the perils of war. Both were committed to their unit. In fact, even though Prasenski was seriously injured his last tour, he volunteered to return, Cole says.

“Me and the sergeant never had any bad relationship,” Cole says, sitting in his motorized wheelchair. “We never, I never provoked him before. We never had any arguments or any discrepancies. So I have no idea at this minute … why he actually shot me.”

“You know I’m gonna shoot you, right?”

Signs of racial tension
An incident that occurred earlier on the evening he was shot suggests racial tension may have played a role. Cole, who is black, had gone to the cafeteria with another soldier, went to get some food to share with everyone back at Prasenski’s CHU. Prasenski apparently didn’t like the selection, or the way the food was being divided. According to Cole and other witnesses, Prasenski, who is white, made his feelings known with some racially explicit language. “Why does the nigger get his own plate and the spics get their own plate and I have to share with a cracker?” he reportedly said.

Cole, however, didn’t take Prasenski’s words as racist. It was common trash talk among soldiers, he says. (Looking back, he recalls a sign on Prasenski’s microwave — “No niggers allowed in this microwave” — and wonders if there may have been more to it.)

After eating, Cole went to the gym. Then he stopped off to see Prasenski and two other friends: SPC Santi Medrano and SPC Danny Rugel. Soon after Cole arrived, he said Prasenski turned his attention from the television screen to his loaded, Beretta semi-automatic handgun. Cole says he saw him reach for it, and in a matter of seconds, Prasenski was in front of him pointing the 9mm barrel at his face.

“You know I’m gonna shoot you, right?” Cole heard him say matter-of-factly. Cole thought it was a joke. He and others had seen Prasenski wave and point his gun at people before. “Shoot me?” Cole said. “For what?”

“I just ignored what he was saying,” Cole recalls. Prasenski repeated his threat. Then, referring to Cole’s close calls with roadside bombs, Cole says Prasenski coldly uttered: “Well, hear this: Since you could dodge those IEDs, let me see you dodge this bullet.”

Cole says he saw Prasenski squeeze the trigger and felt the bullet rip through the left side of his neck. It struck Cole’s upper spinal chord. He fell to the floor.

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