Killings deal Lewis-McChord base ‘another blow’

JOINT BASE LEWIS-McCHORD, Wash. – A soldier suspected of killing 16 Afghan villagers Sunday comes from Joint Base Lewis-McChord, one of the largest military installations in the U.S. – and one that has seen controversies and violence in the past few years.

The base, home to about 100,000 military and civilian personnel, has suffered a spate of suicides among soldiers back from war. The Army is investigating whether doctors at Lewis-McChord’s Madigan Army Medical Center were urged to consider the cost of providing benefits when reviewing diagnoses of post-traumatic stress disorder.

Four Lewis-McChord soldiers were convicted in the deliberate thrill killings of three Afghan civilians in 2010.

The military newspaper Stars and Stripes called it “the most troubled base in the military” that year.

“It’s another blow to this community,” said Spc. Jared Richardson, an engineer, as he stood outside a barbershop near the base Sunday. “This is definitely something we don’t need.”

Catherine Caruso, a spokeswoman for Lewis-McChord, said she could not comment on reports that the soldier involved in Sunday’s shooting was based there. A U.S. official speaking on the condition of anonymity told the Associated Press that the shooter was a conventional soldier assigned to support a special operations unit of either Green Berets or Navy SEALs engaged in a village stability operation.

It wasn’t immediately clear if the soldier was with Lewis-McChord’s 3rd Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division, which sent about 2,500 soldiers to Afghanistan in December for a yearlong deployment. The brigade had deployed to Iraq three times since 2003; this is its first deployment to Afghanistan.

Lewis-McChord, a sprawling complex south of Tacoma, has grown quickly since 2001.

Officials there have said that any community the size of the base is bound to have its problems, and its reputation has been tarred by “a small number of highly visible but isolated episodes” that don’t reflect the accomplishments of its service members, including their work overseas and the creation of new programs to support returning soldiers.