Ex-Marine Ruled Insane, Not Guilty in Slaying

A federal judge on Friday ruled that a former Marine accused of shooting his ex-girlfriend to death at the El Toro Marine Corps Air Station last summer is not guilty of murder by reason of insanity.

U.S. District Judge Gary L. Taylor reached the verdict after reviewing psychiatric reports that concluded that Aldaten Leonard Bush, 31, was insane on Aug. 21 when he went on a shooting rampage at the air base.

Staff Sgt. Deborah L. House, also 31, Bush’s former companion and mother of his 8-year-old son, was fatally wounded in the incident. Another Marine was injured.

According to medical reports prepared for both the prosecution and the defense, Bush has long suffered from symptoms consistent with chronic schizophrenia, such as delusions and the hearing of voices.

While Bush told his lawyers he does not remember the details of the shooting, he could recall that he heard commands to take his child away from House and hijack an airplane to Lebanon, said Deputy Federal Public Defender Joan Freeman, his attorney.

Because of the insanity ruling, Bush--whom Taylor called a “danger both to himself and others”--will be confined to a maximum-security psychiatric facility, possibly in Rochester, Minn., for an unspecified amount of time.

“He will finally get the treatment he’s needed all his life,” Freeman said. “It’s the appropriate way to handle this case. He’s not going to be walking out of there. He just wants help.”

Freeman predicted that Bush, who is from South Carolina, will be confined for “years and years” in federal facilities for the criminally insane. He will not be eligible for release until his doctors, and ultimately a judge, determine that he no longer poses a threat to himself or society.

Taylor said the case is one of those “rare instances” in which the prosecution and the defense agreed on what should be done with a defendant accused of such serious crimes.

While Bush did not plead guilty to the murder, assault and weapons charges against him, all sides accepted the alleged facts and eyewitness accounts of the shooting and decided to leave the verdict up to the judge.

“It’s overwhelming when all these doctors say it’s clear (that Bush) has a problem,” said Assistant U.S. Atty. Susan Wiech, the prosecutor. “It is somewhat unusual.”

House, a 13-year Marine Corps veteran who served in the Gulf War, was on duty when Bush gained entry to the base, then chased her from a parking lot into a bathroom where he shot her in the head.

The mother of three died five days later. A second victim, Cpl. Patrick D. Crudup, 20, was hospitalized with a head wound.

Authorities said the fatal shooting capped six years of harassment and threats that Bush mdirected at House during a longstanding dispute over their son. The situation grew increasingly tense a few days before the shooting, when House obtained a restraining order because Bush had threatened her repeatedly.

The seventh of 12 children, Bush grew up in an impoverished family and spent much of his childhood in self-imposed isolation, according to his attorney.

Freeman said that Bush, who became a construction worker after serving four years in the Marines, told her that the voices he heard had been “nice” during his childhood, but turned evil while he was serving in the military.