Citation Nr: 18156499 Decision Date: 12/11/18 Archive Date: 12/10/18 DOCKET NO. 16-62 862 DATE: December 11, 2018 ORDER Service connection for the cause of the Veteran’s death is denied. FINDING OF FACT 1. During his lifetime, service connection was not in effect for any disability. 2. The Veteran died in October 2013, due to a gunshot wound in the chest, the victim of a homicide. 3. The cause of the Veteran’s death has not been shown by competent evidence to be related to his service or any event of service. CONCLUSION OF LAW 1. The criteria for establishing service connection for the cause of the Veteran’s death have not been met. 38 U.S.C. §§ 1110, 1131, 1310, 5107; 38 C.F.R. §§ 3.303, 3.312. REASONS AND BASES FOR FINDING AND CONCLUSION The Veteran had active service from April 1986 to July 1986; January 1987 to November 1998; and November 1998 to April 2003 ending with a bad conduct discharge. The Veteran passed away in October 2013. See Death Certificate (Certificate). His mother is the Appellant. She filed a claim for dependency and indemnity compensation by parents in December 2014 and a separate claim for aid & attendance in July 2015. This case comes before the Board of Veterans’ Appeals (Board) on appeal of an April 2015 rating decision by the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) Regional Office (RO) in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. The Board is not sure what the Appellant is seeking regarding the aid & attendance claim and refers this claim back to the RO for adjudication. Dependency and Indemnity Compensation (DIC) benefits are payable to the surviving parent of a veteran if the veteran died from a service-connected disability. 38 U.S.C. § 1310; 38 C.F.R. § 3.5. Service connection for the cause of a veteran’s death is warranted if a service-connected disability either caused or contributed substantially or materially to the cause of the veteran’s death. 38 U.S.C. § 1310; 38 C.F.R. § 3.312. Service connection may be granted for disability resulting from disease or injury incurred in or aggravated by active military service. 38 U.S.C. § 1110, 38 C.F.R. § 3.303. Service connection may also be granted for any disease initially diagnosed after service, when all the evidence, including that pertinent to service, establishes that the disease was incurred in or aggravated by service. 38 C.F.R. § 3.303(d). The death of a Veteran will be considered to have been due to a service-connected disability when the evidence establishes that a disability was either the principal or the contributory cause of death. 38 C.F.R. § 3.312(a). The principal or primary cause of death is one which, singly or jointly with some other condition, is the immediate or underlying cause of death or is etiologically related thereto. 38 C.F.R. § 3.312(b). A contributory cause of death is one which contributed substantially or materially to cause death, or aided or lent assistance to the production of death. See 38 C.F.R. § 3.312(c). Determinations as to whether service connection may be granted for a disability that caused or contributed to a Veteran’s death are based on the same statutory and regulatory provisions that generally govern determinations of service connection. See 38 U.S.C. § 1110; 38 C.F.R. §§ 3.303, 3.307, 3.309. As a general matter, service connection for a disability requires evidence of: (1) the existence of a current disability; (2) the existence of the disease or injury in service, and; (3) a relationship or nexus between the current disability and any injury or disease during service. See Shedden v. Principi, 381 F.3d 1163 (Fed. Cir. 2004). Medical evidence is required to establish a causal connection between service or a disability of service origin and the veteran’s death. Van Slack v. Brown, 5 Vet. App. 499, 502 (1993). In cases of service connection for the cause of the death of a veteran, the first requirement of a current disability will always have been met, the current disability being the condition that caused the veteran to die; however, the last two requirements for a service connection claim must be supported by the record. See Carbino v. Gober, 10 Vet. App. 507, 509 (1997). The Veteran’s death certificate indicates that his cause of death was a gunshot wound in the chest. The Board notes that the Veteran was the victim of a homicide. See Certificate. At the time of death, service connection was not in effect for any disability. The Appellant contends that service connection is warranted for the Veteran’s cause of death because as she stated in her December Form 9, “I believe in my heart and everything my son wrote that his death was related to his active duty in the US Army, and he was done wrong and sentenced wrongly.” While sympathetic to the appellant’s claim, the only evidence of record tending to support her claim for service consists of her own lay statements. The record confirms that service connection was not in effect for any disability prior to the Veteran’s death. Additionally, there is no probative or persuasive evidence, medical or otherwise, showing that the gunshot wound is directly or secondarily related to service. The Appellant has not demonstrated that she has the training or credentials necessary to state competently that the Veteran’s death is attributable to an in-service event or disability. See Jandreau v. Nicholson, 492 F.3d 1372, 1377 (Fed. Cir. 2007). Given these facts, the Board finds no reasonable possibility that referral of this case for a medical opinion would result in favorable findings. 38 C.F.R. § 3.159(c)(4). Therefore, the preponderance of the evidence is against the appellant’s claim of entitlement to service connection for the cause of the Veteran’s death, and the claim must be denied. A. C. MACKENZIE Veterans Law Judge Board of Veterans’ Appeals ATTORNEY FOR THE BOARD B. Banks, Associate Counsel