Former Carson soldier Needham, charged in slaying, dies in Arizona
PUEBLO - It’s hard to look at photos that trace the arc of John W. Needham’s short life — a happy blond teenager in his grandmother’s Pueblo home, then a proud young soldier and finally a haunted young man in an Orange County, Calif., jail uniform, facing murder charges.
‘’You can’t really understand how something like this could happen,” said his grandmother, Mary Celaya, holding pictures of her late grandson as tears ran down her cheeks. “How a sweet young man could go off to serve his country, come home so hurt and then get messed up with that young model and end up in jail. He was never the same after he was wounded. He was so depressed.”
John Needham — one of the former Fort Carson soldiers profiled in The Gazette’s Casualties of War series — died Feb. 19 at his mother’s home near Tucson, Ariz.
Read the "Casualties of War" series.
He’d just had back surgery to try to repair some of the pain and damage an enemy grenade did to him in Iraq in 2007. Needham, 25, may have had a fatal reaction to pain medication. His mother, Cindy Northcross, heard him fall to the floor that morning and couldn’t revive him.
Needham was a soldier in what is now the 4th Infantry Division’s 4th Brigade Combat Team. Deployed to Iraq in 2007, his unit saw hard combat, suffering numerous casualties, especially to roadside bombs. The Gazette’s Casualties of War series focused on the unit after an unusually high number became involved in violent crimes upon their return from Iraq in 2008.
Needham’s early death was just part of the tragedy. Needham, a decorated and honorably discharged soldier, was at his mother’s house courtesy of $1 million bail. He was arrested in a San Clemente, Calif., condo on Sept. 1, 2008, in connection with the beating death of his 19-year-old former girlfriend. The young man had only been discharged from the Army for a few weeks.
Needham received some attention at the time because he’d written a letter to the Army’s Inspector General describing atrocities against Iraqi civilians that he’d witnessed.
But he’d also suffered brain injury and shrapnel wounds to his back and legs in a grenade explosion in Iraq. First treated at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C., he was then sent on to Fort Carson. He wasn’t the confident, easygoing young man that Celaya had seen off to war a year before.
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