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Friday, May 04, 2012

This is the remains of Captain Bruce K. Clark who was killed in Afghanistan this week arriving at Dover Air Force Base. He was skyping with his wife on Tuesday, May 1 when he was shot and killed. Yes, I said while they were video chatting.
 
I found out these details on Tuesday morning although the general public found out 3 days later. Why was the Army so slow in reporting this? How did I know? The parent of one of my kindergartners. She arrived late to pick up her daughter at 11:30 hysterical after having just talked to her sister in Texas. Captain Clark was married to her sister and is my student's uncle.  No other information has been released at this time. I spoke with the parent today and the Army is still investigating.

Such a sad sad story as any soldier's death is but how many of us would want to witness their loved one's murder. I say murder because what else can it be? Friendly fire? Someone cleaning their gun? I just feel so bad for this man and his family left behind.

1 comments:

Gman said...

Well this is the inherent danger of reporting what appears to be reality from those who are experiencing trauma from an unexpected death only to find out later that the facts may not simply support the perception. I think the Army waited to delay any report release to do a thorough investigation and to AVOID exactly what happened in this blog post-a premature report that simply wasn't what it appeared to be. CNN posted an article today that states, "Agents conducting the investigation, found no trauma to the body beyond minor abrasions and a possible broken nose most likely caused from Captain Clark striking his face on his desk when he collapsed," Grey said.

When I was studying to be a journalist in College years ago, one of the first things I learned was to weigh the sources with skepticism even if that meant delaying a story to await the facts. I am not by any means saying that those who lost their loved one were lying or deceiving anyone, I think that perhaps given the trauma, they may have jumped to an obvious conclusion without waiting for an explanation. We still don't have all the facts, but it does appear that this man was most likely not shot as was reported erroneously. Just my two cents...