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"America's Got Talent" contestant Timothy Michael Poe claimed on TV to have TBI from Afghan War grenade attack. Military: Not so fast

h/t Fark

Military disputes TV contestant's claim of combat injuries


A contestant on "America's Got Talent" gained sympathy from the judges and applause from the audience when he described suffering a TBI in Afghanistan, but the military says it has no record of him being injured, The Associated Press reported.

In his appearance Monday on the NBC talent competition, Timothy Michael Poe told judge Howie Mandel he had served in the military for 14 years but "my career was cut short" by a rocket-propelled grenade in Afghanistan.

"By the time I turned and went to jump on my guys, I yelled 'grenade' and the blast had hit me," he says in his audition video, which was aired along with the judges' interview before Poe sang. He said his stutter was due to the brain injury he suffered in the blast, along with a broken back.

The studio audience responded to his declaration of military service with thunderous applause, and judges Mandel and Sharon Osbourne appeared shocked and sympathetic while he spoke.

However, the Minnesota National Guard told AP on Tuesday Poe had served in the Guard for nine years, working as a supply specialist, and was not injured in the month he was deployed to Afghanistan in 2009.

"We looked very closely at his record," spokesman Lt. Col. Kevin Olson told AP. "We did not find something to substantiate what he said."

An NBC spokesman told AP the network and Poe would have no comment.

"America's Got Talent" airs Tuesdays on AFN Family.

Source: The Associated Press


AP Newswire | Stars and Stripes
 
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Update:

Timothy Michael Poe won over the crowd and the judges of NBC’s “America’s Got Talent” even before he began to sing, with his moving story of blocking a grenade blast in 2009 to save his buddies in Afghanistan – an act of heroism he said broke his back and left him with a brain injury. When a judge remarked during the episode broadcast Monday on the disappearance of Poe’s stutter during his cover of a Garth Brooks song, he spun another tale: He discovered his talent only after his speech therapist suggested he sing in the shower to help with the stutter.

The truth, according to an ex-wife, was that Poe not only was never hurt on the battlefield, he had been singing “pretty much his whole life” and spent four years fronting an alternative rock and cover band in Rochester, Minn. A MySpace page last updated in February 2009 for the Rochester band Crawl Space lists Poe as vocalist.

In another discrepancy, it was confirmed Thursday that Poe gave “America’s Got Talent” and WFAA a photograph of another soldier and passed it off as himself. The caption of the original picture on the official military website Defense.gov says it shows Staff Sgt. Norman Bone serving in Afghanistan in 2006.

But the contestant’s fiancée, Carrie Morris, tells a different story. According to Morris, Poe, while going through a myriad pictures he has uploaded to his computer, accidentally attached an errant photo in addition to others in an email sent to America’s Got Talent producers. She went on the record with talk radio host and friend of the Glenn Beck program, Joe Pags, who also managed to obtain what appear to be military records reflecting the contestant’s medical condition. If genuine, the records would seem to corroborate Poe and Morris’ story. However, military medical records like this have been fabricated before, thus Pags, and The Blaze remain cautious until the documents’ have been validated.


more


Tim Poe: Did ‘America’s Got Talent’ Contestant Lie About Being Wounded in Afghanistan? Fiance Carrie Morris Speaks Out on Joe Pags Radio Show | Video | TheBlaze.com
 
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