And on June 19, skeletal remains were found in a field behind a cul-de-sac of a residential neighborhood in Killeen. The author knocks on the doors bearing the darkest symbols, behind which lie guns, ammo, antisemitism, antiabortion dogmaand a belief in the coming civil war. How had he managed to escapeand where had he gotten his gun? A group of soldiers, including Robinson, greeted them. (Fort Hood) A soldier in the 1st Cavalry Division was found dead Saturday in his company area, according to a statement from. Then they tried burning the body. Fort Hood was founded in January 1942 as a training ground for tank destroyers, selected for its varied terrain. When the family exhumed his body in November 2020 for want of a second opinion, the independent autopsy revealed that the bone had in fact gone missing.) Toxic leadership is nothing new. (Penny says they met online.) Fernandes had just been stationed at Fort Hood in January. Last December, an internal investigation found that Fort Hood's culture, environment, and leadership resulted in women feeling "vulnerable and preyed upon," with no reliable recourse for their very real sense of duress. Fort Hood Soldier's Mother Pushes for Change After Death - Spectrum News Hazel Buck Blackwell, whose family lost their farm, homestead, barns, orchards, and adjoining land when the base took over, said the closest thing might be the unexpected death of someone you loved very much. It was a heartrending, searing experience, central Texas historian GraDelle Duncan said, leaving lifetime marks on all, and actually killing some from the psychic devastation that followed. In 2018, a soldier was allegedly shot and killed in her front yard by her husband at Fort Campbell, in Kentucky, which also has one of the highest rates of suicide in the Army. The coming months brought the suicides of Staff Sergeant Richard Harrington, 45, and then Specialist James Green, 23. July 2, 2022 (86 years old) View obituary Chong Thigpen November 12, 2021 (66 years old) View obituary Jaylen Tristian Bush April 3, 2021 View obituary Cecil Earl Garrison February 21, 2021 (87 years old) View obituary Daniel John Hunt January 29, 2021 (79 years old) View obituary Aage John Hoffman January 26, 2021 (86 years old) View obituary Later the same day, at 8:30 p.m., Aaron Robinson's girlfriend, Cecily Aguilar, changed her story and told Army investigators that Robinson had confessed to her that he killed Guillen in the arms room, beating her to death with a hammer. On the night of August 19, Wedel-Morales went out to Club Fuego, located in a desolate strip mall about 10 miles east of Fort Hood. A few days later, so did 21-year-old Specialist Trey Ring. Atop these sedimentary layers of desecration, displacement, and disorientation, the U.S. War Department set out to build a base that would go on to serve as a footnote to nearly every war in modern memory. Inside the Rash of Unexplained Deaths at Fort Hood | Vanity Fair His body was mostly intact but for his hyoid, which was never found. On March 5, 2020, Destanie Sawyer's five-year-old daughter found her father, Specialist Christopher Sawyer, 29, after he had shot himself dead in the bedroom of their Fort Hood housing. "What on earth are you training for?" (There was also literal toxicity on base in that some of the mold-infested barracks where soldiers lived were "technically condemned," according to Maureen Elliott, a military spouse and a housing advocate.). [2] Agamemnon demonstrates disrespect, vanity, and other lapses in judgment, the result of which is what clinical psychiatrist Jonathan Shay describes as "moral injury"a " (i) betrayal of what's right, (ii) by someone who holds legitimate authority, (iii) in a high stakes situation." The material on this site may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, cached or otherwise used, except with the prior written permission of Cond Nast. By then Wedel-Morales had grown distant from his family in Oklahoma, who had not been told of the marriage. When Elisabeth Finch met Jennifer Beyer in 2019, the two women forged a fiercely loyal friendship, and eventually got married. Basic details of the incident kept changing. My caution wasnt entirely unfounded. Site Gregory Wedel-Morales' remains were found in Killeen, Texas. On August 25, a rail worker in Temple, Texas, 26 miles east of Fort Hood, saw a body hanging from a tree across from a burned-out warehouse near the tracks. The search party arrived at Fort Hood at 3 a.m. Guillen's staff sergeant told the group to come back in the morning. This was true of many I met at Fort Hood, including press officer Major Gabriela Thompson, my tour guide on base, who told me she joined to pay off her student loans: It was my ticket out, she said, echoing other soldiers sentiments about how the military had rescued them from hardscrabble existences. Fort Hood is the Army's premier installation to train and deploy heavy forces. It rained that night, and the drive, which should have taken three hours, was slow going. By then, the Army, it seemed, had stopped providing Wedel-Morales with a sense of purpose, and he had turned to alternate sources of meaning, namely car and motorcycle clubs, and life beyond the base. Two days after Staff Sergeant Anthony Lovell, 40, disappeared in 2017, his body was found, eyes pecked clean, face split in half, in a creek off Killeen's seedy main corridor called Rancier, the same street where Specialist Freddy Delacruz, 23, was shot and killed last March. (Marine Lance Corporal Riley Schultzs death on March 15, 2019, at Camp Pendleton in San Diego County, was also ruled a suicide, despite his hyoid being broken. The soldiers said that Guillens belongings had been found in the arms room, but otherwise she had left no trace. On April 30, 2021, Fort Hood found that Guillen had indeed been sexually harassed by a soldier, but not Robinson.). Memorial that now stands at the site Vanessa Guillen's remains were found in Killen, Texas. In January 2017, Fox News cited reports to say the Army and local police were probing deaths of 11 Fort Hood soldiers who died on and off the base in the months before under mysterious circumstances, as per reports. Drugs suspected in case of two Fort Bragg soldiers found dead in barracks His body was found nearly a month later, two miles from the barracks. Beyond the base, gas station attendants and restaurant servers, many of whom were veterans or had ties to the military, all seemed resigned to certain fates. Traveling in the time of plague, trying to build rapport with people from six feet away, was enervating. This negates civic participation, as the state no longer needs to collect taxes and thus stops serving the people, who in turn have no need to pressure the government for anythingthe very dynamic that continues to play out in oil-rich Gulf states. FORT HOOD, Texas (CBSDFW.COM) - U.S. Army officials at Fort Hood have identified the soldier who was found dead Saturday, Oct. 13 behind his company barracks. Fertility Rate. Far from itthe military was operating as it had been intended. Even then, it was she who had to scare up the $3,500 in bail money, and after Fort Hood sent two officers to pick up Casteel, officials refused to share information with Rodriguez. Driving into Killeen last fall, what greeted me was a deer, roadkill, that had been severed in half, Next I passed Club Dreams, where Specialist Shelby Jones was shot, bled out, and died last March; then Guns Galore, where Army psychiatrist Major Nidal Hasan purchased a semiautomatic pistol that he would use to kill 13 people in 2009. They married in May 2017, and he took her name with hyphenation. Also that year, Marine Lance Corporal Maria Lauterbach was raped by her superior, which she reported. (Penny says they met online.) Basic details of the incident kept changing. In other battles, having lost the use of his arm and later a leg, Hood had to be strapped to a horse for combat. That morning, Guillen had left her third-floor barracks and headed downstairs to her work station at the motor pool, a vast garage for military vehicles. In death, Guillen has become a kind of patron saint for all those who feel wronged by the U.S. military. Just before noon, Guillen left her keys, Army ID, and bank cards in one arms room and entered another adjacent arms room, separated by a hallway. A sergeant from Guillen's division called it "mandatory fun days." September 10, 2020. Thomas Berg, whose son Private Brandon Rosecranss Jeep was found burning in May, told me not to go out after dark. On April 29, it was Private Joshua Barnwell, 19. First it was a five-mile run, then it was a two-mile run. Hockin was found dead behind his company barracks. On August 11, a higher-up called Fernandes's mother, Ailina, to tell her that her son had not shown up for work for two days. She had also missed her standing noon call with her fianc, Juan Cruz. On March 5, 2020, Destanie Sawyers five-year-old daughter found her father, Specialist Christopher Sawyer, 29, after he had shot himself dead in the bedroom of their Fort Hood housing. The rolling, semi-arid terrain is ideal for multifaceted training and testing of military units and troops. Ive lost brothers and sisters in arms, a marriage, Ive lost family, Ive lost friendships that were supposed to be forever. Fort Hood Independent Review | Army People First The problem with Fort Hood: Violence, deaths and disappearances - MEAWW According to officials, the deaths include seven off-duty accidents; seven suicides; one combat-related death; four homicides, one of which was on the base; two of natural causes; one that was. Matthew Disney, 20, of Aberdeen, Maryland, were pronounced dead on the scene by emergency medical personnel at the North Carolina military. There she encountered Specialist Aaron Robinson, also 20 years old but a rank above. All this has been true since the founding of the American military, but a sense of disorientation has increased in recent years, as wars that were never good to begin with began to lose moral shine. None of the grunts I spoke to was surprised by the number of casualties. Morta's death comes amid intense scrutiny of Fort Hood in recent weeks. Yet instead of being taken into custody, Robinson was placed in a conference room on base, initially, it was said, for committing adultery, which is against the Uniform Code of Military Justice. The sense of dehumanizing alienation soldiers complained about was not a symptom of a malfunctioning system, it was its original design. Maxwell Hockin, 26, was. "That is the opposite of what he's been consistently saying.". Fort Bragg; which has nearly double the soldier population as Fort Hood, is reporting 24 deaths so far this year, with five of them happening in accidents, one homicide, seven from illness,. Hood was an unsuccessful battle commander; 400 men of his Texas Brigade died in a single fight, some would argue through incautious direction. Vanessa Guillen and a number of other soldiers at Fort Hood sparked outrage across the country, leading to an independent review of the command climate and culture on the military post. Dozens of Deaths at Fort Hood in 2020: Is 'Toxic Culture' at - People The base might have continued to devour its soldiers had it not been for a missing soldiers family whose rage, love, and devotion would attract the attention of the media, celebrities, and later the White House, sparking congressional and military investigations. Dozens of people were killed, died by suicide, or went missing from the Texas military base last year alone. He also wanted an education, and joining the Army he knew he could take care of all of that, his sister Carma Johnson says. Killeen itself sits on an especially brutal stretch of central Texas, along the Balcones Fault, which separates the high plains of the Hill Country to the west from the grand prairies and limestone plains of the east, and along which runs Interstate 35. Green Beret NCO dies during physical fitness training at Fort Bragg The tributaries that run through Fort Hood flow into the Leon River, where Guillen's remains were later found.