Medal of Honor Case Reopened for San Diego Marine

New has compelled the Department of the Navy to consider awarding the Medal of Honor to a Navy Cross recipient who has been credited with saving lives of Marines during house-to-house fighting in Fallujah, Iraq in 2004, the Marine Corps Times reports.

Sgt. Rafael Peralta, a San Diego resident, was killed in 2004 after being shot in the head and laying on a grenade that went off moments later — shielding members of his unit from the blast. He was a member of a Marine Corps Base Hawaii unit.

New video evidence and a pathologist's report suggest the Marine was alert enough after the gun shot wound to intentionally protect other Marines from the grenade. 

Peralta's brother, Pfc. Ricardo Peralta, enlisted in the Marine Corps after his brother's death and is now stationed at Twentynine Palms, and told the Times he chose to be an infantryman because of his brother.

The Marines' family moved to San Diego illegally from Mexico in the 1990s, the report added, and Rafael Peralta enlisted in the Marine Corps in 2000 on the same day he received his green card.

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