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Report ahead on soldier's death
Posted by MJLaBurt to NDN AIM
March 04, 2003
http://www.recordonline.com/archive/2003/03/04/whtwocro.htm
By Wayne A. Hall
Times Herald-Record
waynehall@th-record.com
West Point - The Army is poised to release its final findings into how Sgt. Alan Two-Crow died last July at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point.
Reservation officials and family members of the decorated soldier have said they don't agree with the explanations they've received since Two-Crow's mysterious death last July. And unless the report offers up some solid evidence, said tribal lawyer Thomas Van Norman, Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe reservation officials feel there might have been foul play and a cover-up.
None of the explanations so far from Army officials - including those West Point officers offered during an hours-long session in an Eagle Butte, S.D., Super-8 motel in October - answered all the tribe's questions, said Van Norman and Two-Crow's father, Don Two-Crow.
The questions still haunting Indian groups, including the National Congress of American Indians, include exactly what killed Two-Crow.
"The only fatal injury he had prior to death was described by forensic doctors as a twist of the neck," Van Norman said.
There may never be any way of telling why or how Two-Crow died, said Dr. Bradley Randall, a pathologist hired by the Two-Crow family. Randall performed a second autopsy on the soldier Sept. 30 in South Dakota.
Randall said he agreed with a previous military autopsy by top Army pathologists that concluded Two-Crow's accidental death resulted from a twisted neck seconds after he fell down a steep, unlit embankment early on July 14. A subluxation, or severe twist of the neck, can cause death by shutting down the nervous system.
Despite the two autopsy results, Two-Crow's father said recently, "We want a better explanation." Why, he wants to know, did it take two civilians just two hours to find the body on Sept. 22, when the military couldn't find it in almost two months? The partly decomposed body was found near a large housing complex.
"We remain skeptical," said Van Norman, who sees a dark side to what he considers vital, missing information. "To the family and others here in South Dakota it is a clear case of murder."
It was the exposure to the elements that make any kind of cause of death determination unclear, Randall said. There were no signs that Two-Crow was intoxicated, although it was impossible to tell after the body's exposure, he said. Still, Randall said he's sure the Army got it right: That Two-Crow's death was accidental.
West Point officials have not commented on the investigation after Two-Crow's West Point memorial service. West Point spokesman Maj. Kent Cassella referred questions to the Army's Criminal Investigation Division command, in Fort Belvoir, Va., which said West Point has been highly cooperative.
Letters obtained by the Times Herald-Record show that post Superintendent Lt. Gen. William J. Lennox Jr. assured Two-Crow's family that West Point "took extraordinary steps to locate Sergeant Two-Crow following his disappearance in July."
Lennox also reiterated that West Point did not consider Two-Crow "absent without leave" or AWOL, "because of his outstanding performance and reputation." Lennox asserted: "Two-Crow was believed to be missing."
The Sept. 27 letter to South Dakota Sen. Tim Johnson outlined the search steps that failed to locate Two-Crow:
- The day Two-Crow went missing, comrades suspected he might have taken a short-cut back to his barracks through steep, rocky, wooded terrain. Army helicopters, with state police aboard, flew over the Stony Lonesome housing complex to develop a systematic search. For three days, military police and Army investigators searched the area, with state police K-9 teams. They couldn't find Two-Crow. But Lennox said, "The Criminal Investigation Division investigation continued unabated for eight weeks."
- They spoke to the individual who had last seen Two-Crow. They scoured the banks of the Hudson, circulated missing person posters, publicized the disappearance. Nothing turned up, said Lennox.
The senator pressed the Pentagon for an expanded Army investigation in November.
A spokesman for the CID command, Marc Raimondi, said yesterday that the investigation was expanded, but it wasn't a separate probe from the one started at West Point. "We added several agents highly trained in forensics," he said.
He said a final CID report will soon lay out "all the scenarios" suggested by forensic evidence.
But the CID command, whose major general has become involved in the case, won't release its final report until agents can go to Two-Crow's reservation and speak to his family, Raimondi said.
That might be difficult. Don Two-Crow, a volunteer reservation firefighter, is involved in another sad task: helping to locate pieces of the space shuttle Columbia, in Texas.
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