GUILFORD – In May, when Joe Ocasio participated in a motorcycle ride to raise money for the wounded soldiers receiving treatment at Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany, he never expected his own son would be occupying a bed at the same hospital a few months later.
“It was a good run and it was for a good cause,” Ocasio said, of the annual ride organized by the American Legion Riders from Post 189 in Norwich. “I never thought three months later my son would be in there.”
On Aug. 13, Ocasio received the phone call every parent with a child in the military dreads. His son, 24-year old Marine Lance Corporal Randy Lopez, had been wounded in Afghanistan.
“It was confusion at the beginning,” reported Ocasio, who said he and his daughter-in-law received conflicting reports about what happened to Lopez.
What they’ve been able to piece together is that Lopez - who is attached to Fox Company, 2nd Battalion, 9th Marine (also known as “Hell in a Helmet”) - was on foot patrol with 11 other Marines. They were returning to base when an improvised explosive devise, commonly referred to as an IED or roadside bomb, went off. According to his father, the 2005 Bainbridge-Guilford graduate took the brunt of the explosion, partially shielding at least one of his fellow Marines.
“It sounded like an ambush,” Ocasio said, explaining that after the initial blast, which knocked his son unconscious, the unit took on enemy fire. Several others were wounded in the exchange. They encountered a second IED, as well, but it did not detonate.
According to Lopez’ mother, Cynthia, she and her husband aren’t sure where in Afghanistan the fire fight took place.
“He couldn’t tell us,” she explained. But she does know he was removed by helicopter to Craig Joint Theater Hospital at Bagram Air Base, approximately 25 miles north of Kabul. There, she said, he was treated for wounds to both legs, his left arm and shoulder.
“I guess in Afghanistan, they did whatever they could,” Cynthia Ocasio reported. Then, some time between Tuesday and Wednesday of last week, he was transported to Landstuhl.
When she and her husband spoke to him on Thursday, he had undergone surgery to further clean the wounds he described to them as “gaping holes.”
Despite his ordeal, and the hearing loss he sustained in his left ear which may or may not be permanent, the Ocasios said their son was “in good spirits.”
