Washington Marines charged in Iraqi’s killing

Two Marines from Washington state are among eight servicemen who have been charged with murder in the death of an Iraqi man.

Marine Lance Cpl. Robert B. Pennington, 21, of Mukilteo; Lance Cpl. Jerry Shumate Jr., 20, of Matlock; five other Marines and a Navy corpsman were charged Wednesday in the death of Hashim Ibrahim Awad, who was pulled from his home and shot while U.S. troops hunted for insurgents.

All eight servicemen have been charged with murder and kidnapping and are being held at Marine Corps Base Camp Pendleton in California.

Other charges include conspiracy, larceny and providing false official statements.

Some or all of the troops being held could face the death penalty, though Col. Stewart Navarre, chief of staff for Marine Corps Installations West, said “it’s far too early to speculate on that right now.”

Terry Pennington, 56, of Mukilteo, denied the charges against his son.

“They’ve been accused of something that did not happen,” Pennington told the Herald of Everett for a story published Thursday.

He characterized the charges as an “overreaction.” “The fact my son is involved in this has devastated us, but we’re willing to fight.”

Diann Shumate said she and her husband, Jerry, got a call from their son on May 23, and he “said something went bad and they brought him back early.”

On Thursday, she told the Daily World newspaper in Aberdeen, about 25 miles southwest of Matlock, that her son didn’t divulge any details the next day when he called collect from the brig at Camp Pendleton.

She said she doesn’t believe her son is capable of murder and that “something happened that we’re not getting the whole story.”

Amanda Shumate, 22, said her family began questioning the basis of the charges against her brother when they visited him at the brig over Memorial Day weekend.

“We made up our minds right there that that’s not what happened and he’s going to come out of this clean,” Shumate told the Associated Press in a phone interview Thursday from the family’s home in Matlock.

She defended her bother, calling him “the guy that rallied the football team even though they were going to lose anyway.”

“He wants to be a role model. He wants to be a hero. That’s why he joined,” she said.

Jerry Shumate Jr. is a graduate of Mary M. Knight High School in Elma, a town south of Matlock at the southeastern edge of the Olympic peninsula.

In school, his mother said, he was known as “the kid who looked out for the little guy.”

Robert Pennington, a graduate of Kamiak High School, was on his third deployment in Iraq.

He was in the initial assault on Baghdad and fought in Fallujah, Terry Pennington said.

Late last month, Pennington learned from military officers that his son was being held in the brig at Camp Pendleton. Pennington said he talked to his son on the phone every day.

The family is hurting, but Robert Pennington remains upbeat because he believes he’ll be cleared of the charges, his father said.

“He says the truth will come out and we’ll see at that time how wrong the charges and the allegations are,” Terry Pennington said.