CULVER CITY : Purple Heart Awarded to Pilot Killed by Friendly Fire
An Army pilot from Culver City was among 14 U.S. servicemen awarded Purple Heart medals posthumously nearly a year after they were killed in a widely reported friendly-fire incident over northern Iraq.
Erik Scott Mounsey, 28, was flying one of two U-60 Blackhawk helicopters shot down by U.S. Air Force jets in the April 14, 1994, incident that killed 26 people, 15 of them Americans.
Mounsey, a native of Westchester, was married to his high school sweetheart, Kaye. She and their daughter, Natasha, live in Culver City.
The Purple Heart usually is awarded to soldiers who are injured or killed in combat or during an enemy attack. Army and Air Force officials last year ruled that Mounsey and the other Americans killed in the friendly-fire incident did not meet the criteria for the medal.
But Rep. Julian C. Dixon (D-Los Angeles) last year lobbied the Army and Air Force to review their decision.
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