Mentally Stressed Iraq War Vet Kills Park Ranger and injures four others near Seattle on New Year's Day BY TOD ENSIGN Just miles from where a national conference on post-traumatic stress disorder will be held on February 4th, another tragedy occurred involving a deeply disturbed Iraq combat veteran who had served at Joint Base Ft Lewis-McChord. Benjamin Colton Barnes, 24, had returned from a combat tour of Iraq suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. His former partner, Nicole Santos, with whom Barnes had a one-year-old child told the press that she had obtained two restraining orders against him because he had violent tantrums, made repeated suicide threats and kept "a lot of weapons in his home." Barnes apparently snapped at about 3:00 am on New Year's Day at a party in the Seattle suburb of Skyway. According to press reports, several people had come armed to the party and a "show and tell" about their guns had led to an argument and then a shootout. Barnes fled, leaving three men and a woman wounded, two of them critically, authorities said. Barnes, who had survival training, packed his car with weapons, body armor and all-weather gear and fled into Mt. Ranier National Park south of Seattle. Unfortunately, a young Park Ranger, Margaret Anderson with virtually no police experience and armed only with a revolver tried to stop the fleeing veteran before he could get to the busy Paradise recreational area. At Barn Flat, officials found Ms. Anderson, the mother of two small children, dead with Barnes nowhere to be seen. On January 2, police helicopters in the park found Barnes' body. He had apparently died of exposure--not suicide. Barnes had earlier been discharged from the Army for misconduct after an arrest for drunk driving and illegally transporting a weapon. This discharge could have barred him from receiving mental health treatment from the V.A.