TECUMSEH — By all accounts, Seth Strasburg was a model soldier.

Disciplined, courageous, cool under fire, ethical, a natural leader — he was one of the best, according to a contingent of military men who served with Strasburg in Iraq and spoke on his behalf in a Custer County courtroom in 2006.

Yet Strasburg, once a highly decorated member of the U.S. Army with seemingly unlimited  potential for advancement, now resides at the Tecumseh State Correctional Institution, serving a sentence of 22 to 36 years on manslaughter and weapons charges.

“I did a very stupid thing, and I should be in prison,” Strasburg, 30, said in an interview. “There’s nothing in me that thinks that kid should be dead.”

Early on the morning of New Year’s Day 2006 — after a night of drinking with buddies — Strasburg walked toward a Chevrolet Suburban that had pulled up to a residence in Arnold.

Accounts vary about what happened next, but Strasburg and Brandon Nansel, one of the occupants in the Suburban, got into an argument, possibly over remarks by Nansel that offended Strasburg.

According to papers the Nebraska Attorney General’s Office filed with the Nebraska Court of Appeals, Strasburg pulled out a handgun, grabbed Nansel by the back of the head and pointed the weapon under his chin.

The two men fought over the gun, and it discharged, striking another Suburban passenger in the right cheek.

Thomas T. Varney V, 21, was life-flighted to Kearney, where he died the next evening.

Strasburg fled the scene, but was apprehended hours later after a standoff and negotiations with a SWAT team. Prosecutors later charged him in Custer County with second-degree murder, terroristic threats and use of a firearm to commit a felony.

As part of a plea deal, Strasburg pleaded no contest to manslaughter in the unintentional killing of Varney and to the weapons count.

At the sentencing hearing in Broken Bow that September, District Judge Mark Kozisek referred to Strasburg’s admirable military record and insubstantial adult criminal history.

Kozisek turned to clinical psychologist James Cole’s assessment  that said, “Seth brought Iraq home with him.”

Cole diagnosed Strasburg with post-traumatic stress disorder, but, according to a court transcript of the sentencing hearing, Kozisek noted that the psychologist also determined “‘PTSD does not alone explain the shooting. The primary associated culprit was alcohol abuse.’”

There was no evidence, Kozisek said at the hearing, that anyone in the Suburban meant to provoke Strasburg.

“If anything, the defendant misconstrued comments made by Nansel and reacted in a belligerent and hostile manner,” the judge said. “I consider the actions that he took on that night as those of a bully seeking to intimidate those that were in the (Suburban).

Strasburg also dismisses the role PTSD had in the shooting, even denying he suffers from the disorder.

“I wanted to go back to Iraq,” he said. “Why would I want to return to the place that caused me  ‘traumatic stress?’”

“… It’s not like all vets are whacked out. What I did was one in a million.”

He said he remembers little about the night of the shooting. One witness, he recalled, said Strasburg got angry after Nansel made a remark about Strasburg being a sniper in Iraq.

“He (Nansel) throws that up at me,” Strasburg said. “… I don’t know why, (but) I just flipped out.”

Strasburg had served more than seven years in the U.S. Army, including an assignment to a sniper team in Iraq. After his tour of duty ended, he got hired by a private company to provide security for U.S. government workers in Iraq.

He was home on leave at the time of the shooting. Family members had noticed a change in him, his mother said.

“We did see things, but we didn’t know then what it was,” Aneita Strasburg said.

She recalls her son sitting on the very top row of bleachers at basketball games, his back pressed against the wall “so he could see every exit.”

Seth Strasburg said he kept a handgun and body armor in his green 2005 Jeep.

He also longed to return to Iraq. He missed both the stark clarity of a country marked by violence and the deep bonds of friendship and trust such an environment forges within a military unit.

“In Iraq you know what’s really important,” he said. “Your values change. … Everybody has their eyes open about the way the world really is. … It’s not someone yapping about Paris Hilton. That pisses you off.”

He talked about his experiences in Iraq, but flatly refused to discuss whether he ever had to kill there.

“People can be flippant about that,” he said. “‘Oh, did you kill anybody?’ That’s a personal thing. You wouldn’t ask someone if they had sex with their wife.”

Aneita Strasburg sees a clear connection between her son’s experience in Iraq and the Arnold shooting.

“Do I think there’s a relationship? He was (diagnosed) with PTSD. I think that speaks for itself.”

In the aftermath of the shooting, she and a daughter established an organization to disseminate information about PTSD and held conferences in North Platte and Kearney in 2007, she said.

“It’s a very real issue,”Aneita Strasburg said. “The longer it goes untreated, the harder it is to treat.”

But for the Varney family, references to the disorder sound, painfully, like excuses.

Thomas Varney’s mother, Barb Varney, is reluctant to talk about what happened on New Year’s Day 2006, and afterward.

“We don’t want this to become a debate that upsets the people in our community,” she said in a letter to a Journal Star reporter. “The court decided that Seth is guilty and has to spend time in jail. That should be the end of the story.”

PTSD, she wrote, should never be used as an excuse.

“Are they looking at these people before they went to war? … It makes my blood chill that anyone would be excused for murdering anyone.”

Thomas Varney was a pre-mortuary science student in Wyoming and was expected to take over the family’s funeral home business in Arnold, Barb Varney said in an interview.

She said the shooting was hard on the quiet, peaceful community of about 700 people near the Sandhills.

Her son’s death was hard on the family, too, and continues to be.

In a letter included in the presentence investigation report, Thomas Varney’s father, Tiff Varney, wrote, “Our family has suffered to the unknown degree and more.”

Tiff and Barb Varney had two daughters in high school at the time of their son’s death.

One of girls wrote that she and her sister “have been robbed of (our) childhood innocence” and that they “can’t and won’t be the people (they) might have been.”

Kozisek sentenced Strasburg to 10 to 16 years on the manslaughter charge and a consecutive term of 12 to 20 years on the weapons count.

In his initial appeal, Strasburg argued, among other things, that the sentences were excessive. The Nebraska Court of Appeals rejected the claim in April.

“How can it be excessive?” Barb Varney asked. “He’ll be out in his 40s. He took a man’s life. I wish he could serve more time.”

Four of Strasburg’s military buddies traveled to Broken Bow for the sentencing in September 2006, Aneita Strasburg said.

One of them, Andrew LaSalle of Philadelphia, described Strasburg as “literally the epitome of what leaders said (soldiers) should be like.”

Strasburg, LaSalle said in an interview Friday, was “cool, calm, collected (and never) buckled up under pressure in Iraq. … He was my mentor.”

LaSalle, 26, a finance major at Temple University, recalled the time their patrol captured an Iraqi man who had been placing ordnance in the ground.

The captain suggested soldiers should “rough up” the prisoner, LaSalle said.

“Seth verbally lashed out at our captain, saying that that was immoral,” LaSalle said. “From that point on, other soldiers looked up to (Strasburg).”

LaSalle said he understands how the Arnold shooting occurred.

“I heard what the judge had to say,” he said. “He was uninformed about PTSD. PTSD pushes you to drink.”

LaSalle said the disorder is rarely talked about in a culture that puts a premium on toughness.

“There is a stigma to it, especially in the military,” he said. “If you show any sign of weakness, you’re shunned.”

Although Strasburg vigorously denies he has PTSD, he does see a connection between his experiences in a war-torn environment and the shooting.

“If I would have had a couple of months to decompress, this wouldn’t have happened,” he said.

“People need to know, you’re different when you come back.”

Reach Clarence Mabin at 473-7234 or cmabin@journalstar.com.