All Due Respect : Hundreds of Marines Attend Services for One Who Served Them Well

Family members and hundreds of U.S. Marines poured into the military chapel here Monday to remember Sgt. Deborah House, 31, who was killed in a hail of bullets allegedly fired by her former companion.

“Staff Sgt. House was truly a Marine’s Marine,” Maj. Allen Turk said.

Added Lt. Col. Michael Albano: “She was the Marine we sought out when we were in trouble. She was always there when someone needed her.”

Friends praised the dedication of House, a 13-year corps veteran who served in the Gulf War.

She was shot in the head Aug. 21 while on duty at the base. Immediately afterward, military police arrested former Marine Aldaten Leonard Bush.

According to FBI officials, Bush had been threatening and stalking House for six years. She and Bush had a son together eight years ago. The couple separated two years later after Bush allegedly pointed a gun at her and threatened to kill her, authorities said.

According to court records, House obtained a restraining order against Bush on Aug. 13, after he allegedly made a series of threats against her.

Bush apparently was let onto the base on Aug. 21 because he was wearing fatigues and a guard recognized his insignia as that of a former Marine.

After entering the base, authorities said, Bush drove to a squadron building where House worked, chased her into a women’s bathroom and shot her in the head. Cpl. Patrick Crudup, 20, and another Marine who worked with House heard her screams and ran to help, but Crudup was also shot in the head; his colleague managed to escape through the bathroom window. Military police found Bush a short distance away and arrested him.

House died five days later.

Crudup was treated for injury to the head and is recuperating off the base, Marine officials said.

Murder charges are pending against Bush, federal prosecutors said. The federal government is handling the case because the shooting happened on government property.

House’s relatives, many of whom are from New York state, flew in for the funeral Monday.

“At this moment, we face a situation that is doubly bitter because of a senseless act that took this person before her time,” said the chaplain, Lt. Bradford Ableson. “This is a world of radical freedom . . . and in this world it is possible . . . to strike a blow” and take away an innocent person’s life.

When Operation Desert Storm began, Ableson said, House had “said goodby to her husband and deployed to the Southwest station (in Saudi Arabia), where she served with her fellow Marines. . . . She took her job as a leader seriously.”

House is survived by husband Albert Dennis House; three children, Kasif, Edreina and Brian; her brothers, James, Rickey , and Lou; and sisters, Joyce and Brenda.