Alleged Russian Bounty Plot May Have Killed FDNY Firefighter

A decorated FDNY firefighter who was killed in Afghanistan may have been a victim in the alleged Russian plot to pay bounties for dead coalition soldiers.

The New York Daily News reports that firefighter and Marine reservist Christopher Slutman, who was killed by a car bomb along with two other Marines near Bagram Air Base in April 2019, may have died as a result of the potential plot revealed by the New York Times last week.

The mother of Robert Hendriks, a Marine corporal also killed in the attack, has called for an investigation into whether Taliban militants who killed the three Marines had targeted him to obtain the Russian money.

“The parties who are responsible should be held accountable, if that’s even possible,” Long Island resident Felicia Arcuelo was quoted as saying in a CNBC article about mothers of military sons killed in Afghanistan seeking a probe of the Russia allegations.

According to Stars and Stripes, Slutman was one of 22 American soldiers who lost their lives in Afghanistan in 2019, which was the highest number of deaths in a year since NATO combat operations in the country ended at the close of 2014.

Slutman joined the FDNY in 2003, was assigned to Ladder 27 in the Bronx and was a proud member of the department's Emerald Society. He served as a staff sergeant with the Marine Corps.

In 2013, Slutman and another firefighter pulled an unconscious woman from a burning apartment building in a South Bronx high-rise, receiving the FDNY's Fire Chiefs Association Memorial Medal for his heroics.

He is survived by his wife and three daughters.