Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
Father questions Navy SEAL son’s death
The South Florida father of a Navy SEAL killed during an anti-terrorism raid in Yemen is demanding an investigation into its planning and criticized the Trump administration for its timing.
Bill Owens told The Miami Herald in a story published Sunday that he refused to meet with President Donald Trump when both came to Dover Air Force Base to receive the casket carrying his son, Chief Special Warfare Officer William “Ryan” Owens.
“I want an investigation,” said Bill Owens, a retired Fort Lauderdale police detective and veteran who lives in Lauderdale-by-the-Sea. “The government owes my son an investigation.”
Ryan’s half-brother John Owens told the Sun Sentinel he was at Dover and did meet with Trump.
“My dad’s opinion is his own, and it is his right to have an opinion. But that is not representative of the family,” John Owens said.
He said there was no discussion at Dover about whether to meet with Trump. “We did not talk about it at all,” said John Owens, who lives in California.
Ryan joined the Navy after high school, following in his family’s footsteps. Halfbrothers John, 42, was also a SEAL, and Michael, 44, a Hollywood police officer, was also in the Navy.
Bill Owens served four years in the Navy, then joined the Army Reserves in Arlington Heights, Ill. When he saw a notice in a military magazine for new recruits for the Fort Lauderdale Police Department, he successfully applied.
His marriage to Ryan’s mother ended soon after they moved to South Florida, and Patricia, who also became a Fort Lauderdale police officer, eventually moved with Ryan and her new husband back to Peoria. She died in 2013.
William Owens, a 36-year-old married father of three, was the lone U.S. fatality in the Jan. 27 raid on a suspected al-Qaida compound. Approximately 16 civilians and 14 militants died in the raid, which the Pentagon said was aimed at capturing information on potential al-Qaida attacks against the U.S. and its allies.
Owens said he refused to meet with the president because the family had requested a private ceremony.
“I’m sorry, I don’t want to see him,” Bill Owens recalled telling the chaplain who informed him that Trump was on his way from Washington. “I told them I don’t want to meet the president.”
He said he was also troubled by the attack Trump leveled at Khizr and Ghazala Kahn, an American Muslim family whose Army officer son died in Iraq in 2004. The couple had criticized him at the Democratic National Convention last summer. He also questioned why the president approved the raid a week after taking office.
“I told them I didn’t want to make a scene about it, but my conscience wouldn’t let me talk to him,” Bill Owens told the Herald. “Why at this time did there have to be this stupid mission when it wasn’t even barely a week into his administration? Why? For two years prior, there were no boots on the ground in Yemen — everything was missiles and drones — because there was not a target worth one American life. Now, all of a sudden we had to make this grand display?”