ACE BUTCHER: ARMY FAILED MY DEAD SON
Legend says soldiers must be given help FAN ‘TRICKED’ BY TOUT
A LIVERPOOL fan told last night how he felt “sick and embarrassed” after paying £700 for a fake Champions League final ticket.
Mark Raw, 47, has already booked his trip to Kiev but faces missing the match against Real Madrid.
He was put in touch with the Twitter seller – who used the #EUCL hashtag – by a pal.
Mark said: “He called
ENGLAND football legend Terry Butcher called on the Army to help veterans after his son Chris died fighting post-traumatic stress disorder.
The former Three Lions captain fought back tears as he urged the services to “look after their people”. Chris, 35, was forced to leave the Army in 2015 after witnessing the horrors of war on gruelling tours in Afghanistan and Iraq.
The Army captain turned to drugs and alcohol to quiet the flashbacks, hallucinations and voices after returning home.
His father found him in a bedroom of the family home in Suffolk last
October where he had been living after the mental torment led to troubles in his marriage.
At an inquest, next to Chris’ widow Laura, the tough former defender tearfully said:
“In truth, after intense tours of Iraq and Afghanistan he became a victim of war.
“These circumstances are all too familiar, our country has many veterans suffering from the same situation who were released from the armed forces too early and having to rely on an overloaded NHS that is ill equipped and underfunded to cope.
“Our armed forces have a duty to look after their people, before, during and after active service but this responsibility has been discarded too easily.”
The 77-times around to my house in what I thought was a taxi but it was a hire car. He said the price was £700 for the ticket and I bought it off him.
“He said it was his ticket and he couldn’t go and this, that and the other.’’
After the seller had left he examined the ticket against his pal’s real one and “just knew it was fake”.
He called the tout back and capped centre-back said Chris was a “hero who so proudly served his country and who paid the ultimate price for his bravery”.
He begged the forces to reconsider the support given to “our heroes and victims of war”.
Ipswich Coroner’s Court heard Chris was haunted by the voice of an Army major telling him to kill himself, the screaming voices of his friends and Afghan children and flashbacks to an explosion.
He would wake retching in the middle of the night thinking he could smell burning after watching his pals maimed and injured.
Assistant coroner Dr Dan Sharpstone said: “I suspect Christopher was attacked day and night by an enemy he couldn’t see in his war without end.”
He recorded a verdict of death due to an enlarged heart of uncertain cause combined with drug use and a background of posttraumatic stress disorder. demanded the return of his cash. But the seller insisted the ticket he had handed over was 100% real.
He accused Mark of swapping it for a bogus one in a scam to get his money back before switching his phone off.
Uefa has warned fans who buy tickets from unofficial outlets may not get into the stadium on Saturday. EXCITED: Supporters