Afghanistan Vet Has Three Of His Four Hands Stolen
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Dr. Daniel McConnell’s say he’s the unluckiest lucky person they’ve ever met. Now that three of his prosthetic hands have been stolen, the first-year medical resident and Afghanistan veteran has decided to accept his fate.
“I’ve survived stuff that I shouldn’t have,” he said. “But it would be nice to catch a break at this point.”
McConnell lost his right hand in April 2008 during his deployment to Kandahar, Afghanistan, and has since returned to the states and completed his studies at East Tennessee State University’s Quillen College of Medicine. Now working as a resident, he keeps several electronic terminal devices, or prosthetics, that help him complete precise tasks.
“Most people don’t need backups, but if I’m in a position where I’m seeing patients and it breaks, I’ve got to have other ones ready to go,” McConnell said.
He had four prosthetic hands until last weekend, when someone stole three of them out of his black BMW. The devices, or hooks, had recently been repaired and McConnell says he picked them up late last week and put them into a black bag labeled “Wounded Warrior,” which is a nonprofit that helps injured soldiers. Somewhere between the few hours on Saturday that his car was parked on Lamont Street and the following day spent at his home in the Beechwood subdivision, the prosthetics, along with his GPS, went missing.
“I went with a friend of mine to the Elizabethton car show and I know the backpack was there when I left because I grabbed a chair to take with me and I saw it,” he said.
McConnell didn’t check for the bag again until Monday before heading to work. That’s when he realized some very important items were missing. As police continued their investigation, one of McConnell’s neighbors found a GPS in the bushes above his home and a purse in another section of the subdivision. Although the GPS belonged to someone else, McConnell speculates that he wasn’t the only victim.
“I was less than pleased,” he said. “I have a very low tolerance for thievery. You can’t justify that. I can see somebody justifying stealing tomatoes because they were hungry and had no money, but when you’re stealing stuff out of people’s cars to pawn and get cash it’s ridiculous.”
Whoever stole McConnell’s hooks may have been a little disappointed to find expensive items with no market to sell them in because they are such rare items. He says the Veterans Affairs Medical Center at Mountain Home prices the prosthetics at $3,700 per piece. If someone does try to pawn them, each hook has a serial number that McConnell would be able to identify. In the meantime, he hopes the VA will help him get some replacements.
“I don’t usually walk around with a bunch of prosthetic hooks on me, but I just happened to get them all back at once,” he said.
“I would be thrilled if the bag just randomly showed up at the VA or something, but I don’t really expect that to happen.”
Last weekend’s robbery wasn’t the first McConnell has experienced. He’s had items stolen out of his vehicles while living in Washington, D.C., San Antonio and Fort Hood, Texas, during the 10 years he served in the National Guard.
In June, his storage unit on West Market Street was broken into and his car was side-swiped in a hit-and-run accident.
“I’ve gotten to the point now where I just accept my luck. I’ve even kind of given up on the idea that there is luck. Things happen and things don’t.”
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