Posted on 12/17/2004 2:10:40 PM PST by swilhelm73
PHILADELPHIA (AP) -- A Fort Stewart soldier was arrested after he had his cousin shoot him so he wouldn’t have to return to Iraq, police said Thursday.
Army Spc. Marquise J. Roberts, of Hinesville, Ga., suffered a minor wound to his left leg from a .22 caliber pistol on Tuesday, police said. He was treated at a hospital, then arrested after he and his cousin allegedly confessed to having made up a story about the shooting.
“They just broke down and confessed that they concocted the whole story so he didn’t have to go back to the war,” said Lt. James Clark of Northwest Detectives.
Police charged Roberts with filing a false report and charged his cousin, Ronald Fuller, with aggravated and simple assault and other charges.
Roberts, 23, was on a two-week leave from the Army’s 3rd Infantry Division, which led the assault on Baghdad in 2003 and is scheduled to return to Iraq within the next few months.
Police said Roberts, a supply specialist who had spent seven months in Iraq, was distraught about having to return to combat duty and wanted to stay with his family.
Lt. Col. Cliff Kent, a spokesman for the 3rd Infantry, said Roberts had been scheduled to return this week to Fort Stewart, Ga.
Roberts could face military discipline if the charges prove true, Kent said, but that likely wouldn’t occur until the civilian courts were through with him.
Clark said the cousins gave differing accounts of the incident to investigators, prompting further interviews and their eventual arrest.
Roberts claimed he was shot during an attempted robbery, but Fuller said the incident occurred at another location during an argument, according to Clark. In subsequent interviews, police said, both men admitted they were lying.
“He was very, very emotional about the whole thing,” Clark said. “He was breaking down, crying a lot.”
The 3rd Infantry division had 44 soldiers killed in action during the invasion of Iraq. The division returned home in the summer of 2003.
He is lucky to live in these times. For the last 100 years or so he would face a firing squad.
*grin*
--erik
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