by Brian Skoloff
Associated Press/Breitbart.com
December 29, 2009
WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. (AP) – U.S. Navy Petty Officer 3rd Class Johann Gokool lost his left foot when a bomb ripped a hole in the side of the USS Cole nearly a decade ago, but the injury was nothing compared with the mental torment that ravaged him almost daily.
He returned home to Florida suffering severe post-traumatic stress disorder and frequent panic attacks so violent he would launch into seizures and even fractured his own wrist several times as he flailed, sister Natala Gokool said Tuesday.
One of the brothers he lived with found him dead in their home last Wednesday, just a week after his 31st birthday, Natala Gokool said. His cause of death was unknown, though she said foul play was not suspected. The family believes the seizures just became too much for his body to handle.
Gokool was an electronic warfare technician aboard the Cole when suicide bombers rammed a small boat packed with explosives into it on Oct. 12, 2000, during a refueling stop in Aden, Yemen. It triggered a string of deadly fires. Seventeen U.S. sailors were killed and 39 others injured.
His sister said he soon began having panic attacks.
“Every year around the anniversary of the attack on the Cole, it seemed to get worse and more violent and more frequent,” she said.
Gokool recalled her brother as a “fun-loving, outgoing, friendly, generous to-a-fault type of person,” even after the bombing.
Born in Trinidad, he moved with his family to South Florida as a young boy, and joined the military right out of high school.
He was in the ship’s mess hall during the attack.
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