Soldier Uninjured in War Is Killed in Detroit

A U.S. soldier just back from the Gulf War was shot and killed early Monday morning during an apparent robbery in which his car was stolen, police said.

Army Spec. Anthony Riggs, 22, was shot to death at about 2:15 a.m.--less than 24 hours after he arrived in Detroit--as he was loading a van with his family’s belongings. The van was parked outside the home of his aunt in an area the aunt described as “a neighborhood full of crackheads.” “Six months in Saudi Arabia and he didn’t have a scratch on him,” said Marjorie Cato, Riggs’ aunt. “Comes back here and he gets his . . . brains blown out.”

Cato said Riggs operated a Patriot missile battery in Saudi Arabia. “He shot down a Scud, too. That was one of the first things I asked him when he walked through the door.”

Riggs’ wife, Toni, had warned him that there had been a shooting on the block earlier in the day, Cato said. “He said he’d just got back from having missiles flying over his head, and a few shots weren’t going to bother him,” Cato said.

Riggs died of multiple gunshot wounds at Detroit Receiving Hospital. Police said they have no suspects in the shooting.

The killing threatened to become a political issue Monday, coming on the heels of President Bush’s contention that it was more dangerous on many of the nation’s streets than it was for troops in the Persian Gulf. “This is a sad indictment of the crime on the streets of the city of Detroit,” said a spokesman for Michigan Gov. John Engler, a Republican backing the crime bill. But Detroit City Council President Mary Ann Mahaffey charged that “you can get tough all you want to, the question is are there jobs, are there drug treatment programs?” Standing on the sagging porch across the street from where Riggs had been shot, Cato said the problem is that politicians will let people like Riggs fight for America but they don’t care enough to protect them in their own neighborhoods.