NEW BRAUNFELS, Texas — After coming home from Iraq, Ray Rivas’ life had become a grind of rehab and chronic pain from a brain injury. On that morning in July 2009, he told his wife he hadn’t slept the night before - the headaches that had plagued him since a mortar shell exploded near him three years earlier often robbed him of sleep.

But Colleen Rivas said her husband was in good spirits as he drove away from their New Braunfels home.

‘He left with a doughnut in his hand and a smile on his face,