By Ronnie Thomas
The Decatur Daily, Ala.
DECATUR, Ala. — Former Army Sgt. Jantzen Murrell Frazier, an only child growing up in Hartselle, got anything he wanted or needed, his father recalled.
“He was definitely spoiled, but he was always a caring person,” Murrell Frazier said. “He was willing to help anyone at any time, no matter what.”
Jantzen Frazier, 28, died Thursday afternoon trying to help save a neighbor’s house from burning as a member of the Oden Ridge Volunteer Fire Department.
Chief Jeff Duffey said as firefighters battled the blaze, Frazier left the scene at 630 Wilson Mountain Road, went home on foot to his pickup and drove to Station 2 for another fire engine.
Heading back to the scene about 3 p.m., he apparently lost control of the fire engine, ran off the road and flipped it, knocking down a utility pole. Morgan County Coroner Jeff Chunn said Frazier died instantly of blunt force trauma.
His funeral will be 2 p.m. Wednesday at First United Methodist Church in Hartselle. Visitation is 5-9 p.m. Tuesday at Peck Funeral Home. Burial will be at Johnson Chapel Cemetery with military honors.
Survivors include wife Leslie, four children, his parents, two grandmothers, and his father-in-law and sister-in-law. Murrell Frazier said his son graduated from Hartselle High School in 2003 and joined the Army, where he trained as a mechanic. After spending that Thanksgiving at home, he flew to Germany without telling his parents.
“When he got there, he called us and told us he was headed to Iraq,” Murrell Frazier said. “He didn’t want us to worry over the holidays.”
In Iraq Jantzen Frazier drove a huge wrecker truck, picking up anything that broke down, from small Jeeps to large tanks. He returned to base at Fort Hood, Texas, and went to the rifle range to practice.
Infantry duty
“A sergeant saw how good he was and put him in a base competition,” Murrell Frazier said. “Jantzen won, and the Army switched him to infantry in the First Calvary Division. He was placed in an accelerated program to train as a sniper.”
Jantzen had met his wife, Leslie, of California, on the Internet after she arrived in Killeen, Texas, to assist a cousin who had two babies and was having medical problems. Jantzen and Leslie married at Fort Hood in 2006, before he departed on a second tour of Iraq. She was pregnant with their first child, Arianna, now 6. Their other children are Coral, 4, and twins Aubrey and Shelby, 2.
In December 2006, while on patrol in Taji, 20 miles north of Baghdad, an improvised explosive device exploded near Jantzen’s vehicle. His father said 234 stitches were required to close wounds to Jantzen’s lower body, and he received the first of five Purple Hearts. Then he returned to combat. Murrell Frazier said he and his wife, Debbie, were at Decatur General Hospital with Leslie for the Arianna’s birth in 2007, when his son called from Iraq.
“I gave my cellphone to a nurse and she took it to the delivery room,” he said. “Jantzen heard Arianna crying at the moment of her birth.”
Hit by sniper
Later, while manning a .50-caliber machine gun on a Humvee, a sniper fired a bullet that struck Jantzen in the head.
According to the doctors, his helmet slowed the bullet, and it ricocheted, striking him on the left side of his temple but still causing brain damage, Jantzen’s father said. “While at a hospital in Germany, he was diagnosed with a blood clot about the size of a half-dollar in his brain,” Murrell Frazier said.
Jantzen had further treatment at the Army hospital in San Antonio, Texas.
The Army medically discharged Jantzen in April 2011. The family rented a house in Hartselle and three months ago purchased a new home on Wilson Mountain Road. That is about the time Jantzen joined the Oden Ridge Volunteer Fire Department.
Murrell Frazier, an employee of the Wal-Mart Neighborhood Market in Decatur, said he called his son at least once a day.
“During my lunch the day he died, I spoke to him,” he said. “He asked if we would keep the girls because Leslie had a test that evening at Athens State University, and he said he had a fire department meeting at 6:30 p.m.”
Murrell Frazier said he was at his mother’s house when he heard the news that a first responder had been killed on Wilson Mountain Road in Oden Ridge.
“By this time, I knew Leslie’s test had been canceled,” he said. “I called her and she had just gotten home from Athens. She told me their neighbor’s house behind them was on fire.”
Frazier said he asked his daughter-in-law if she saw Jantzen.
“She said, ‘No,’ ” Frazier said, “and I told her to find him and call me back. When she did, she was hysterical.”
Fire Chief Duffey said Jantzen saw his neighbor’s house on fire and used his radio to call 911.
“He got his turnout gear on, raced to the house about 150 feet away and tried to find a way in,” Duffey said. “He called the homeowner to verify no one was there.”
Duffey said he was at work in Decatur when he got a text about the fire.
En route, about a half-mile from the house, Duffey said he got the call about the wreck.
“I went straight to the wreck scene,” he said. “Everybody else had the fire.”
Duffey said the first engine responded from Station 1 at 199 Lawrence Cove Road.
“Jantzen was helping fight the fire and had to rotate out after a significant period of time,” Duffey said. “During that time he was supposed to be resting, the unknown happened. I haven’t found anyone who asked him to do anything in particular. He was just missing.”
Duffey said he did not know why Frazier made a decision to go to Station 2 at 8 Bert Stinson Road, about 2 1/2 miles in the opposite direction from Station 1, to get the other truck, or what piece of equipment he may have sought.
Duffey said it is preferable to have a driver and a spotter, but there is no established rule that a person can’t drive a truck alone.
No witnesses
Duffey said there were no witnesses to the accident. The chief envisioned possible causes — maybe an animal ran in front of Frazier or he met another vehicle in the curve.
“He was still very close to the station,” Duffey said. “There is a hill when you come out of the station parking lot, and you start to go up a rise. That truck, as heavy as it is, would only reach about 25 mph before you reached the crest of that little rise, then there’s a slight downhill slope. There was no way he was going very fast at all, but apparently he was going too fast for whatever he encountered.”
Duffey said with the heat and embers floating through the air, Frazier probably thought the fire threatened his own home and family.
“I don’t know what was in his mind,” Duffey said. “I’m not saying what he did was right or wrong. I can’t make that call. I can’t ask what his motivations were, and I won’t second-guess his motivations.”
Duffey said Frazier had driven all eight of his department’s trucks on several occasions and done an excellent job.
“I had been with him while he was driving Engine 1, but I had never been with Jantzen when he was driving Engine 2,” Duffey said. “Engine 1 is the longer of the two trucks.”
Duffey, in his seventh year as Oden Ridge chief, said in the short time he has known Frazier, “he became a very good friend of mine. He was so full of energy and so happy, you couldn’t help but be drawn to him.”
Duffey said the state fire marshal is trying to determine the cause of the fire that destroyed the double-wide mobile home.
“The home was a total loss, but the walls are still standing and most of the roof is still up,” Duffey said. “The fire apparently extended through the attic and made its way through the entire house. There was considerable fire damage, and the rest of the home was significantly damaged by smoke and water.”
Milton Slate of Hartselle said he has known Frazier from the time he was a child.
“His son and my son are the same age,” Slate said. “Jantzen had a heart of gold, and he always wanted to help people all he could. That’s an absolute.”
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(c)2013 The Decatur Daily (Decatur, Ala.)
Distributed by MCT Information Services