Agencies
Washington: A combat knife carried by a US Navy SEAL in the 2011 raid that ended in death of al-Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden in Pakistan has fetched USD 35,400 at a charity auction.
The proceeds will go to the family of another Navy SEAL who perished in a training accident in March.
Mark Owen, the pseudonymous author of 'No Easy Day', which detailed the bin Laden mission by SEAL Team Six members, told ABC News he was approached by a friend who was setting up the auction and volunteered to donate the knife he's carried with him on missions for over eight years. The auction raised more than USD 75,000 for several special operations charities, but the proceeds from the knife sale will specifically go the family of Brett 'Shady' Shadle, according to Matthew Griffin, a former Army Ranger who helped organised the event. Shadle, who served in SEAL Team Six with Owen, was killed in late March in a training accident in Arizona. Owen's knife, a folding Emerson knife that Owen said was his secondary blade, was bought by an anonymous bidder. It was one of several items in the charity put on by The Macalan Group along with Combat Flip Flops and Intelligent Waves IW simultaneously online and at the Special Operations Forces Industry Conference and Exhibition (SOFIC) hosted this in Tampa, Florida.
Griffin, the co-founder of Combat Flip Flops, told ABC News that when the bids for the knife jumped in the last minutes of the auction, which began on May 1, the audience at SOFIC was ecstatic. "People were cheering, folks were in tears," he said. |
