Houston (TX), Mar 16 (EFE).- The US Army assured this Thursday that so far there are no criminal indications in the death of a Hispanic soldier, who died on Monday at the Fort Hood military base (Texas ), where Vanessa Guillén was murdered in 2020 and whose death led to reforms in the investigation process.
Ana Fernández Basaldua Ruiz, 21, was found lifeless in a maintenance area in that barracks where she had been stationed for the last 15 months, according to a statement issued by the Army.
The Criminal Investigation Division of the US Army began the investigation and in a statement said today that up to this point “there is no evidence of a criminal act” related to the death of the young woman, born in Mexico and a US citizen.
They added that the investigation continues.
“She was an excellent teammate who will be sorely missed,” Cmdr. Patrick Sullivan said in an earlier statement.
The case has drawn attention because the soldier had allegedly been the victim of sexual harassment by a military superior and was planning to abandon her military career, her family reported to the Telemundo channel.
Baldo Basaldua, the victim’s father, told that channel that the preliminary cause of the soldier’s death could have been suicide, but that the Army told him that “they were going to start the investigations.”
Reports of sexual assaults increased in 2021 among the military. According to figures from the Department of Defense, a total of 8,866 complaints of sexual assault were received that year, an increase of 1,050 from the 7,816 received in 2020.
The largest increase in reports of sexual assault occurred in the US Army with 25.6%.
THE SHADOW OF THE VANESSA GUILLÉN CASE
The circumstances are reminiscent of the events surrounding the brutal murder of Guillén in April 2020 by a partner identified as 20-year-old Aaron Robinson, who later committed suicide as he was going to be questioned.
Guillén’s dismembered and burned remains were found on June 30 of that year some 32 kilometers from the base, where he died the same night he disappeared.
Mayra Guillén, Vanessa’s sister, spoke on the social network Twitter about the Basaldua case, which took her by surprise because it was a very delicate issue “of which I am still not fully aware.”
Mayra Guillén was one of the promoters of the promulgation of a decree so that sexual harassment within the Armed Forces is treated as a crime in military justice.
The executive order signed by President Joe Biden implemented changes to “criminalize the negligent issuance or dissemination of intimate visual images in those institutions.
The cases of Basaldua and Guillén are not the only ones where the death of a soldier at Fort Hood has been reported. In 2021, a US House subcommittee revealed that more than 20 soldiers lost their lives in that barracks in 2020 due to homicide and suicide.
The same committee indicated in that report that on that base “violent crimes were perpetrated” such as “cases of sexual harassment and an increase in depression rates” by soldiers whose “morale was on the ground.”
The document states that in a single year there were a total of 1,339 cases of soldiers who had witnessed at least one sexual assault in the last twelve months and 2,625 cases of sexual harassment that were mostly unreported.
According to the Rand Corporation Research Center, one in four women and one in 16 men working in the US military or Department of Defense experience sexual harassment at some point in their career.
