'Wash Post' Probes Noncombat Death in Iraq -- After 'Drunken' Night, a 'Crime,' Not an Accident

By: Greg Mitchell In a front-page piece in today's Washington Post, Donna St. George offers a remarkable view of one "noncombat" death of an American in Iraq in 2006. It opens: "The sun had not yet risen in Taji. A young Army soldier lay alone in the dirt. She was alive, but barely. Her ribs had been crushed; her spleen, ruptured. Her right side was marked by the angular tread of a tire.

"Pfc. Hannah Gunterman McKinney was 20 years old, the brown-eyed mother of a toddler son, when she was spotted in the headlights of a passing Humvee on a perimeter road at one of the largest U.S. military camps in Iraq.

"Thirteen hours later, in Redlands, Calif., Barbie and Matt Heavrin, who had three children in the military, learned they had lost their elder daughter to 'injuries suffered when she was struck by a vehicle,' as the Army first described it.

"But there was more to the story. For the Heavrins, the events of Sept. 4, 2006, inside the wire of Camp Taji emerged bit by bit. McKinney's last hours, they would learn, involved alcohol, sex and a decorated reservist who was responsible for looking out for junior enlisted soldiers such as their daughter."

An excerpt follows. E&P has closely monitored noncombat deaths in Iraq for over four years. The lengthy piece is posted now on the home page at www.washingtonpost.com
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Her case would become one in a litany of noncombat deaths in Iraq, which number more than 700, from crashes, suicides, illnesses and accidents that sometimes reveal messy truths about life in the war zone.

The cases can be especially brutal for parents who lose a child and struggle to understand why. In McKinney's case, many of the details are in a 1,460-page file and court-martial transcript obtained by The Washington Post under the Freedom of Information Act.

Now, her parents want her story to be fully told. They cannot reconcile themselves to the idea that, on that terrible day in Taji, their daughter was left behind.

In the early days after McKinney's death, the Heavrins say they were told by Army officials that it appeared their daughter might have been run over as she crossed a street in the dark while going from a guard tower to a nearby latrine.

There is no mention of that scenario in the case file. But it is what the Heavrins believed as they bowed their heads over her silver coffin in the family church, laying red roses and notes beside their dark-haired daughter.
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