Our son Patrick Casey served his country in combat as a Sergeant in Afghanistan in 2009-2010. For a year we worried about receiving a dreaded phone call from the Army. Patrick returned home safely when many soldiers he served with did not. Shockingly, we did get the phone call we had dreaded. It came from the D.C. Police on September 23, 2011.
On that tragic day in the early morning hours outside a McDonalds restaurant, Patrick was attacked from behind while intervening to break up an altercation between a friend and a group of three men from Virginia who had been barhopping since 7:00 P.M. The attack was confirmed by eyewitness testimony. (Video 1, Video 2) The three men fled the scene. They drove past while police and EMTs were at the scene but they did not stop.
Patrick died from his injuries four days later. No one was ever charged. Making matters worse, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for D.C. led by Ronald Machen precipitously ignored eyewitness testimony and video evidence to dishonestly blame our son for his own death. Prosecutors concluded without supporting evidence that the perpetrator, Jason Ward, acted in defense of his friend Brian Giblin. Ward was a champion bodybuilder with a history along with his friends of drunken brawls in DC. (Video 1, Video 2, Video 3) He was trained in Krav Maga. Incredibly this relevant background, that we discovered, was unknown to the investigators in 2011. Ward was a ticking timebomb in September 2011.
Ward continued his drunken brawling even after killing Patrick. In December 2014 during his office Christmas party Ward had an altercation with a co-worker. Then he attacked the security guard who was removing him from the club. He fled the scene but was later arrested. Ward had no remorse. (Video)
The truth is that Giblin was the initial aggressor inside McDonalds. He admitted he pushed Patrick’s friend first which invalidates any claim of self-defense or defense of another. Justin Ruark, the third in Ward’s group, attempted unsuccessfully to restrain Giblin at the front door. He testified he could not stop Giblin “without, I don’t know, throwing him on the ground or something absurd.” (Picture) All witnesses including Ward and his friends testified that Patrick never threw a punch. Patrick was the one acting in defense of another - his friend.
The USAO-DC denied Patrick due process.
As we will document, the USAO-DC gave Ward preferential treatment by cutting a secret deal with him on October 10, 2011 and obstructed the DC Police from performing a complete and fair investigation. Fundamentally, the investigation by the DC USAO consisted of asking Ward and his attorney what happened and wholly accepted their version as fact. The DC Police files confirm this. Throughout the homicide investigation in 2011 and ever since, the federal prosecutors have denied us information, deceived us and outright lied to us and the public.
Before Patrick joined the Army he worked in Israel and traveled to the Palestinian area, Jordan and Egypt. He grew to love that part of the world.
We were forced to do our own investigation something no parents should ever have to do. We obtained all the DC Police files and DC Police Standard Operating Procedures for Homicide Investigations through the Freedom of Information Act. Our investigation included frame by frame analysis of surveillance video and we, not the investigators, prepared the first incident reconstruction. Ward, Giblin and Ruark were deposed in civil suits that have been settled. Their testimony under oath in the civil suits proves that they lied with impunity during the criminal investigation.
Based upon new evidence discovered in our investigation, the DC Police have concluded that Patrick was murdered and requested the case be prosecuted. The DC Police conclusion of Murder is irreconcilable with the USAO-DC conclusion of defense of another. Regrettably and unfairly the DC Police have remained publicly silent in the face of deliberate misconduct and obstruction by the USAO-DC.
Over a decade since the crime, we are still seeking justice for Patrick, a man who was falsely blamed in the tragic events of his own death while Ward, his friends and the corrupt federal prosecutors have not been held accountable.
*Current Update: View the Complaint we filed in September 2019 with the Justice Department’s Office of the Inspector General and the June 2024 response (Report of Investigation Into Allegations of Misconduct Against Then U.S. Attorney Ronald Machen) that incredibly took the Inspector General five years to produce.* The OIG report is beyond overdue, evasive, incomplete showing a lack of independence, effort and due diligence. The role of the Inspector General is to prevent and investigate fraud and abuse by government departments not to participate in it.
We are currently working with staff of the Senate Judiciary Committee seeking an independent, thorough and fair assessment of the OIG’s June 2024 report.
We present the truth about who Patrick was, what happened the night he was attacked, and the deliberate misconduct by federal prosecutors. We continue to fight for Patrick’s legacy so that who he really was — a dedicated son, a brother and combat soldier with his whole future before him — is remembered and he receives the justice and respect he earned.