Citation Nr: 18145686
Decision Date: 10/29/18	Archive Date: 10/29/18

DOCKET NO. 13-20 818
DATE:	October 29, 2018
REMANDED
Service connection for posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is remanded.
REASONS FOR REMAND
The Veteran served on active duty from July 1966 to July 1969.
This appeal comes before the Board from a March 2010 rating decision.
In March 2016, the Veteran and his son testified at a Board hearing before a Veterans Law Judge (VLJ) who has since retired.  In August 2018, the Board asked the Veteran if he would like a new hearing before a VLJ who would decide his claim, but he has not responded.
In an April 2017 decision, the Board denied service connection for PTSD.  The Veteran appealed the decision to the United States Court of Appeals for Veterans Claim (the Court).  Pursuant to a March 2018 joint motion for remand (JMR), the Court vacated the Board’s April 2017 decision to the extent it denied service connection for PTSD, and remanded the claim to the Board.
In the April 2017 decision, the Board also reopened a previously denied claim of service connection for a low back disability.  The Board remanded that claim, along with five other service connection claims, for additional development.  This step has not yet been completed.  Thus, the non-PTSD issues will be addressed in a future Board decision, if in order.
Service connection for PTSD is remanded.
At his personal hearing and in statements to the RO, the Veteran stated that his PTSD was triggered by not going to help a child who was drowning.  Specifically, the Veteran reported that, while he was stationed in Korea, he was driving a jeep too fast on a wet road, and the child and some other Koreans jumped off a bridge into a lagoon to avoid a collision with the rapidly moving jeep.  Because he was in a hurry, the sergeant who was accompanying the Veteran would not allow the Veteran to help the drowning child.  The Veteran has identified this sergeant as Sergeant Birchall.
With exceptions not applicable in this case, service connection for PTSD requires credible supporting evidence that the claimed in-service stressor occurred.  38 C.F.R. § 3.304(f).  As a result, his lay statements regarding the claimed stressor cannot alone be accepted as conclusive evidence as to the actual existence of his claimed stressor.
VA has not yet been able to verify the occurrence of the Veteran’s stated in-service stressor.  For instance, the Veteran has never claimed, and the record does not show, that he or anyone else filed an official report as to the event that he described.  Moreover, in July 2010, the Defense Personnel Records Information Retrieval System (DPRIS) notified VA that the Veteran’s stressor would not be researched because the death of civilians is extremely difficult to verify and an official report would have had to be filed to verify it.  Later in July 2010, the RO made a formal finding that there was not enough information to undertake additional steps to verify the Veteran’s stressor.  
However, pursuant to the concerns set forth in the March 2018 JMR, the Board finds that a remand is warranted VA to try again to verify the Veteran’s stressor by contacting the Sergeant Birchall who served with the Veteran while he was in the Republic of Korea.  See VAOPGCPREC 5-2014 (Jan. 5, 2017) (Duty to Assist in Seeking Records Pertaining to an Individual Other than the Claimant).
The matter is REMANDED for the following action:
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Contact the Sergeant Birchall who served with the Veteran in the Republic of Korea to attempt to verify whether the Veteran in 1967 or thereabout, while driving with Sergeant Birchall, witnessed Koreans drowning.
 
RYAN T. KESSEL
Veterans Law Judge
Board of Veterans’ Appeals
ATTORNEY FOR THE BOARD	J. George