Nearly six months have lapsed since former Marine Sgt. Andrew Tahmooressi was arrested just over the border in Mexico for having guns in his car that were legal in his home state of California. Now a Vietnam veteran named Terry Sharpe is attempting to bring attention to Tahmooressi’s plight by walking from North Carolina to Washington, D.C.
Sgt. Tahmooressi has maintained that he took a wrong turn on March 31 in a U.S. border town and accidentally ended up in Mexico, where he was arrested for having guns in his car. Mexico has extremely strict anti-gun laws, though that hasn’t stopped the tens of thousands of murders over the last decade perpetrated by cartel drug gang warfare.
The former Marine sergeant has been kept in a Mexican jail facing charges that could get him sentenced to a 21-year jail term if convicted.
Now, according to UPI, Terry Sharpe, a former vet himself, is making the trek to D.C. to urge lawmakers to intervene on Tahmooressi’s behalf. Sharpe says that the sergeant is being treated too harshly for a simple navigation error.
Sharpe says he is “walking to D.C. in protest of Sgt. Tahmooressi’s incarceration in Mexico due to a simple mistake.”
The Reidsville, North Carolina, native is not sure how long the walk will take, but he intends to see it through.
“The first two nights, since I’m not far from home, my wife will pick me up so I can go back home overnight and then take me back to where I stopped,” Sharpe told the media. “After that, it’s the bushes.”
Sharpe is calling his effort the “Free Sergeant Tahmooressi March to Washington” and charges Mexican authorities with preventing the specialized health care that Tahmooressi needs from reaching him in the Mexican jail.
Follow Warner Todd Huston on Twitter @warnerthuston or email the author at igcolonel@hotmail.com.
COMMENTS
Please let us know if you're having issues with commenting.