SALEM, Ore. – A soldier initially listed as killed in action while riding in the same doomed convoy as former prisoner of war Jessica Lynch actually had been captured by Iraqi fighters before he was killed, the Oregon National Guard said Thursday.
More than a year after the March 23, 2003, ambush, the military released new details to the family of Sgt. Donald Walters of Salem, Ore.
Walters “was held separately from his fellow soldiers and killed while in custody,” said Guard spokesman Maj. Arnold Strong.
The investigation announced Thursday revealed the fatal abuse of an American prisoner of war at the hands of Iraqis, Strong said.
“He was executed – shot twice in the back,” Strong said Thursday. “An Iraqi ambulance driver witnessed six Fedayeen rebels standing outside a building guarding him while he was still alive. That same witness evacuated his dead body to a hospital.”
Defense investigators confirmed the account by matching Walters’ DNA to a blood splatter on the wall where he was executed, Strong said. He died from two gunshot wounds to the back, fired from more than 20 feet away, according to Strong’s account of the investigation findings.
In the chaotic opening moments of the ambush, Walters was separated from his unit. Other Americans last saw him running alone down a road, his mother, Arlene Walters, said.
Empty gun magazines were found near where Walters was captured, suggesting he fired until ammunition ran out. Before his capture, he was shot in the leg and stabbed three times in the abdomen with a bayonet, Strong cited the report as saying.
It was not clear whether Walters would have died from the bayonet wounds had he not been shot in captivity, Strong said.
Col. Brit Mallow, a Defense Department war crimes investigator, met with Walters family Tuesday in Salem. Mallow told Walters widow, Stacy Walters, in Kansas City, Mo., on Monday.
“We still feel the pain of losing a son we loved dearly,” Walters’ father, Norman Walters said at a news conference late Thursday. “Now we know what happened. We are not relieved. We are extremely upset at what was done to him,” Norman Walters said.
Walters’ fate drew attention because the details of his actions remarkably resemble a story circulated in the media, based on anonymous sources, describing how Lynch had fought until her ammunition ran out.
After her rescue, Lynch, of Palestine, W.Va., said she did not fire a shot. Her injuries resulted from a Humvee crash during the firefight in the Iraqi town of Nasiriyah, just days into the war.
An Army report released last summer on the ambush of the 507th Army Maintenance Company had said that Walters, 33, likely died in the fighting that left 10 other soldiers dead. The report said there were no American witnesses to his death.
The Pentagon investigated the death after Arlene Walters filed Freedom of Information requests, believing the Army had not given her son credit for actions first attributed to Lynch.
“What upset me was they admitted it wasn’t Jessica Lynch, but they never bothered to find out who that soldier was,” Arlene Walters said.
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