Marine’s return helps family cope with brother’s death

Thursday, April 17, 2003 | 11:07 a.m.

The arrival of Marine Cpl. Richard Brink to his home in Las Vegas from Iraq Wednesday has lifted the spirits of his family grieving the shooting death of his younger brother.

"It's so hard to put into words how Richard's coming home has helped us," brother James Hersom said this morning. "It's helped us 100 percent. It's the one great thing to come out of this terrible mess."

Joshua Brink, 18, was shot while sitting in his car with two friends on East Bonanza Road near Sandhill Road. He managed to drive a short distance before crashing into a wall and dying two blocks from his home last Thursday night.

Services will be 2 p.m. Friday at Palm Mortuary Downtown.

Richard Brink, serving with the Marine Wing Support Squadron 371 of Yuma, Ariz., was with combat units near Baghdad when he got word of his brother's death.

"It was a Red Cross message, so I thought it had to be bad news about my parents or grandparents," Brink, 20, said. "I was in total shock that it was my brother. I thought, 'I'm safer in a war than I would be in my hometown.'

"The emotions now are so mixed. Yes, I was happy to get home and take my first shower in 20 days, but I didn't want to be home under these circumstances."

Brink was given 30 days' emergency leave. His family had not seen him since early January.

"We cried and cried," James said about the reunion. "It's difficult to say just what we talked about. But it was the little things that we would remember that would set us off and make us cry over Joshua."

James had been hanging out with Joshua just hours before he was slain. When he heard police and ambulance sirens in the neighborhood that night, he did not give them a second thought -- not even when he got a call from their mother, Dianna Brink.

"When I got a call from mom, I went to the house expecting to see three Marine officers with news that something had happened to Richard," Hersom said. "When I saw the coroner, I didn't know what was going on. You don't think about these things happening around your home."

Richard said he will try to speak at Friday's funeral.

"I want people to remember my brother as he was -- a prankster who loved to make people laugh," Richard said. "When we were growing up we constantly fought with each other. In recent years we becamse close. We partied together on the Strip last New Year's Eve. That's the last time I saw him."

Next month Richard will be sent to Yuma to serve out the last two years of his four-year hitch. He plans to go to college after that.

The family is asking that any one who has any information on the gunman and two other men with him to call Metro Police.

Police are looking for three teenagers: a black male, 17 years old, 6 feet tall, 165 pounds with a 4- to 5-inch afro hairstyle and light skin, wearing a big silver necklace; a black male, 16 or 17, about 6-foot-1, 165 pounds, with a 4- to 5-inch afro and dark skin, wearing a gray hooded sweatshirt and carrying a gun; a black male, 15 or 16, about 5-foot-4 wearing a black visor with a white do-rag. He also wore a light blue shirt with a wite footprint design and a long silver necklace.

"We believe that they have relatives who may have seen something strange like them running into a house or something," James said. "Also, only one man did the shooting. The other two can still come forward."