(Newser)
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A singer who appeared on America's Got Talent earlier this week with an inspiring story now appears to have made at least some of it up. Timothy Michael Poe told the judges that he had spent 14 years in the military and took up singing while recovering from a brain injury he suffered when he was hit by a grenade while protecting his men in Afghanistan. But the Minnesota Army National Guard says Poe was in the military for less than a decade and there is no record of the supply specialist being injured during the month he spent in Afghanistan in 2009, the AP reports.
"We looked very closely at his record," says a military spokesman, who notes that Poe did not receive the Purple Heart. "We did not find something to substantiate what he said." Poe's ex-wife tells the New York Post that Poe was not injured in combat and, contrary to his claim that he took up singing as therapy for a stutter caused by a combat wound, he was the lead singer of a band years ago. Poe, who made it to the next round of the talent show after moving dozens of audience members to tears with his version of Garth Brooks' "If Tomorrow Never Comes," had no comment.
