About A Drunken Night In Iraq, A Soldier Left Behind

Washington Post
January 4, 2008
Pg. 1
Woman Is Run Over, Abandoned by a Sergeant. Her Family Wants to Know Why.
By Donna St. George, Washington Post Staff Writer
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.
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.
Barbie Heavrin took McKinney's son, Todd, not yet 2, to her coffin to bid goodbye.
"Mama sleep?" the boy asked, patting her forehead.
The Heavrins described their daughter as attractive and willful, with singing talents and a well-honed sense of humor befitting her early childhood nickname: Happy Hannah. She read books constantly -- loved "Gone With the Wind" -- and wanted a career in marketing.
"She was young, spontaneous, very bubbly, giggling, laughing," said Spec. Annette Mack, her roommate in Taji. Another close friend, Spec. Nicole Cabral, said that McKinney took her son's teddy bear to war and slept with it at night.
The death was all the more poignant because McKinney was in her final stretch of war duty, nearing her return to the soldier she had wed in a small ceremony just before deploying. She and Christopher McKinney, then 21, planned a nicer wedding at Christmas, at the Heavrins' church.
"We had a funeral at the church instead," her mother said.
Hannah McKinney had enlisted in the Army Reserve in 2003, then became pregnant with Todd in 2004. When her relationship with Todd's father fell apart, she moved back home to California. But in 2005, hoping for good pay and benefits to support her son, she chose active duty, assuring her family that a single mother would not get shipped to war. It was then that she became romantically involved with Christopher McKinney.
Just months out of Army training, Hannah McKinney was deployed to Taji, north of Baghdad, with the 542nd Maintenance Company, 44th Corps Support Battalion. She was soon pulling shifts with a machine gun and a fellow soldier at guard towers along the camp's perimeter.
Not far from there, one hot September night, three sergeants gathered to celebrate the coming end of their tours, according to their statements in the case file. Among them was Damon D. Shell, then 25, a one-time high school quarterback on his second tour. According to his MySpace page, his interests included Ohio sports teams, women, beer games and drunken karaoke .
Although alcohol was banned in the combat zone, one of the sergeants had managed to buy vodka, and they drank cocktails together that night in the barracks, according to the statements. Later, drunk, the sergeants piled into a Humvee to bid goodbye to a female tower guard, according to testimony.
At the tower, Shell tried to get the two female soldiers to kiss him, but they refused, according to their statements. It was 3 a.m. when the group stopped at McKinney's guard tower. Shell called her down, and she joined them in the Humvee.
A Crime, Not an Accident
The particulars of that night began to unfold after McKinney's funeral, when Barbie Heavrin said she asked investigators for "all the details." She learned that there was no ill-fated trip to a latrine. McKinney's death was a criminal case.
According to Shell's statements, made during interviews and polygraph exams, McKinney got "really drunk after drinking just one glass" of vodka and orange juice in the barracks. When the other soldiers drifted off to bed, he and McKinney had a sexual encounter, he said.
Heavrin cringed to hear such details. McKinney had violated military orders, she knew, by leaving her post and drinking. To McKinney's mother, the sex did not fit in with her daughter's focus on her marriage. She thought of McKinney's low tolerance for alcohol. Her autopsy showed a .20 blood-alcohol level.
Shell told investigators he tried to return McKinney to her guard tower, but she "was in no shape" to go inside. It was about 5:15 a.m. when Shell asked her towermate, Pfc. Rachelle Anderson, to cover for them when the next shift arrived.
"I told him I would not be taking part in any of this," Anderson said in a statement.
Shell left the tower about 5:35 a.m. with McKinney in the 10,000-pound Humvee, drove down a dead-end road, then made a U-turn after he realized his mistake. Along that road, he noticed McKinney's door open and close, he said.
Back at the main road, he pulled into a gap in a passing convoy. In the seat next to him, he saw McKinney hunched forward. As he drove south, he heard the door open again and felt a familiar bump, where the dirt and gravel road became cement, he said.
Unexpectedly there was a second bump, he said, "like I ran over something."
He looked. The door was open, and McKinney was gone. He tried to remember whether she had gotten out, but, he said, "I knew it was a possibility that I had run her over."
He did not stop to check, he said in a statement. "I thought that I hit her," he said, "but at the time I don't even know that I had thought about these things."
Shell drove to the barracks and went to bed as McKinney lay in the road, her clothes disheveled and one boot missing.
It was about 5:45 a.m. when two servicemen in a Humvee said they spotted her. At first glance, they mistook her body for debris.