英語の楽しみ、へ戻る。
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October 7, 2002
Shipmates' Fight Cited in Fatal Midtown Plunge
By ELISSA GOOTMAN and AL BAKER

Lisa R. Tedstone struggled with heroin addiction, failed romances and single motherhood in Greenville, S.C.
But shortly before Sept. 11, 2001, she joined the Navy, and her life seemed to be turning around.

Brian Cooley dropped out of high school in La Porte, Ind., where manufacturing jobs were drying up and
trouble was easy to come by. He found his way out four years ago by enlisting in the Navy.

They met on board the amphibious assault ship Wasp, a 40,000-ton gray vessel, and traveled to the Middle
East to shuttle marines and equipment to and from Afghanistan after the 9/11 attacks. When the ship
returned to the United States a month ago, Seaman Tedstone, 30, and Petty Officer Cooley, 29, returned
to their hometowns, where relatives greeted them as local celebrities who had put their lives back on
track.

But on Friday night, an outing that has long been every sailor's almost inalienable right ・a carousing
evening of liberty on the town in Manhattan ・turned sinister. After hours spent in bars and walking
the streets on a warm autumn night, Petty Officer Cooley and Seaman Tedstone argued in a sixth-floor
room at a Midtown hotel. Then, the authorities said, he shoved her to her death through an open window.
Yesterday, the police were still investigating exactly what had happened.

Petty Officer Cooley was charged yesterday with second-degree manslaughter, which is punishable by
up to 15 years in prison.

Meanwhile, his friends and relatives and those of Seaman Tedstone gasped at the reported details of
the death, and at the arrest. A third sailor, Jeremy Worrell, whose rank could not be obtained from
a Navy spokesman last night, was in the hotel room as the scene dissolved into drunken rancor,
but was apparently asleep at the time of the fatal plunge, the police said. He has not been charged.

"If only they hadn't gone in that room," Seaman Tedstone's father, Charles, said yesterday in
Simpsonville, S.C., where he and his wife, Florence, live with Seaman Tedstone's 10-year-old son.
"She was turning her life around. She was proud she was in
the Navy."

Before joining the Navy, Seaman Tedstone was divorced twice and was trying to support her son,
Aaron, by working as a waitress. She attended classes at the University of South Carolina Spartanburg
and Greenville Technical College, but nothing seemed to work out.

Then she hit on the idea of letting her parents raise her son while she went off to sea.

Seaman Tedstone cut her dark hair, and in April, a Navy spokesman said, she joined the Wasp.

According to a Navy spokesman, Petty Officer Cooley, a hull technician third class, had already been
assigned to that ship for three years.

Growing up in La Porte, he was involved with the Boy Scouts and church, his father, Orval Cooley, said,
but things were not always smooth. "He was a boy," Mr. Cooley said. "Has he been an angel his whole life?
Let's face it, none of us have."

In 1998, Petty Officer Cooley received his high school equivalency degree, and soon announced that he
was off to Navy boot camp.

"The service does things for people, and it teaches them responsibility," Mr. Cooley said. "Personally
I think he squared himself away just as most kids do when they grow up, and there's not been any issues
that I'm aware of since he's been an adult."

On Tuesday, the Wasp docked at Naval Weapons Station Earle's pier, in Middletown Township, N.J., to
unload weapons. The station sits near Sandy Hook, where the spires of Manhattan's downtown office
buildings are just visible. Off-loading weapons is tiring and dangerous work, but the assignment
allows sailors on leave the convenient recreation of a jaunt into the city.

Petty Officer Cooley and his friend Mr. Worrell, who the police said was married, had plans to go
into the city Friday evening, the police said. At the last minute, they invited Seaman Tedstone,
who was an operations specialist in the Wasp's combat information center.

The three came to Manhattan and rented Room 603 in the Milford Plaza hotel on Eighth Avenue,
a blocklong building between 44th and 45th Streets. Seaman Tedstone paid for the room with her
credit card, although the authorities said they believed she had planned to return to the base to sleep.

After a night of drinking and laughing in Lower Manhattan stretched into early Saturday morning, Seaman
Tedstone apparently decided to stay in the room with the two men, said the police, who pieced together
an account of the night from interviews and records.

Mr. Worrell passed out or fell asleep, the police said, and Seaman Tedstone climbed into bed with him.
This infuriated Petty Officer Cooley, who left the room and went downstairs, where he paid cash for a
second room, on the 12th floor, the police said.

But according to investigators, he returned to Room 603 about an hour later, letting himself in with
his key. He yelled at Seaman Tedstone, the police said, telling her it was wrong for her to be sleeping
in a bed with a married man. The argument turned physical, the police said.

The fight lasted 5 to 10 minutes, the authorities said. It ended when Seaman Tedstone fell from the window.

Petty Officer Cooley told the police that while arguing with Seaman Tedstone, he grabbed her by the
forearm and punched her in the face, said Barbara Thompson, a spokeswoman for the Manhattan district
attorney's office. He said that he did not deliberately throw her out the window, although he made
no effort to grab her as she started to fall, Ms. Thompson said.

But the police noted that the window, even when open, is small enough to raise questions about
whether someone could fall through if shoved but not thrown.

Mr. Worrell, who told investigators he woke up when he heard something but then fell back asleep,
is being questioned as a witness.

At 3:41 a.m., a passer-by found Ms. Tedstone's body in front of the hotel on Eighth Avenue.