A New Beginning

BOMB BLAST ENDS ONE CAREER BUT OPENS DOOR TO ANOTHER FOR NJ VETERAN

- Amy Byrnes

For Jeff Koeck, a veteran of the war in Afghanistan, a bomb blast cut short a promising military career. But — with the help of a New Jersey veterans’ group — when one door closed, another door opened in law enforcement.

Right before the explosion, Koeck, a former Marine and Army infantryman, remembered sitting down in a barber chair in Afghanistan and watching as the mirror before him began “flexing out.” It was early in the morning of Aug. 7, 2012, and he wanted to take advantage of being on a main base and get a haircut after being stationed at a smaller outpost.

“All of a sudden, the whole place came down,” Koeck, now 39, remembered. Later, after he crawled out of the rubble of the leveled building, he’d learn that a truck loaded with 4,000 pounds of explosives had detonated about 80 yards from where he’d been sitting, resulting in a number of fatalities and serious injuries.

But even though the former paratrooper would sustain serious injuries of his own from the explosion that would later land him in the hospital for 19 months, he initially shook off the headaches and severe balance issues — not to mention the couple of teeth that got knocked out from the blast — and went back to work.