One Of Our Livingston Finalists
Craig Kapitan's incredible series on a sniper with PTSD: In this case, the suspect was a teenager - 14, 15, 16 ... who knows - who had ridden his motorcycle day after day down a road commonly used by U.S. forces, always pausing suspiciously for a moment at the same spot before moving on. Hancock - positioned in his camouflaged nest roughly four football field lengths away - knew something was amiss, but he needed proof.
So he waited, motionless as the days passed, watching "the kid" develop a pattern.
Hancock had to get permission to extend his stay at his crude post. Eventually his commanders issued him an ultimatum - gather enough evidence to take action by the sixth day or head back. Then, at last, the suspect returned again. This time, Hancock watched through his scope as the boy dismounted his motorcycle and reached for what appeared to be a wire on the ground.
"That was it," Hancock recalled two years later.
Within seconds, the boy, whose face he had gotten to know, was dead with a gunshot wound to the head. Hancock began to pack up.
