Pt. 1/5. Pvt. Lavena L. Johnson. Non Combat Deaths.org.

http://non-combat-death.org/SurnamesJL.htm
http://www.marieclaire.com/world-reports/news/latest/who-killed-lavena-johnson

Shortly after midnight on July 19, 2005, a shift supervisor at a military cafeteria in Balad, Iraq, hears a loud bang that sounds like a car backfiring and races to the tent where it came from. He looks inside. Private First Class LaVena Johnson, 19, a vegan and an honor-roll student who once dreamed of going to film school in Los Angeles, is dead of a gunshot wound to the head.

She is lying on a bed of rocky soil, with gashes on both sides of her mouth; her hair is tangled in the dirt. An M16 is lying on the ground beside her. A Bible, a package of M&Ms, and a pack of Marlboro Lights are also near her body.

Today, more than three years later, LaVena's parents, Dr. John and Linda Johnson, are still looking for answers. Who killed their daughter?

Officials at the Army Criminal Investigation Command spent nine months on the case. They closed the investigation on April 28, 2006, ruling LaVena's death a suicide. Her file is "inches thick," says spokesman Chris Grey. "We stand by our investigation."

But LaVena's father says the Army is lying--he thinks his daughter was murdered. She showed no signs of wanting to kill herself during the two months she spent in Iraq; two days before she died, LaVena told her father she was coming home in November to get the house ready for Christmas. "Don't start decorating without me," she said.

Johnson isn't the only one questioning the suicide ruling. Ann Wright, a retired Army colonel and former diplomat who has written about LaVena for the political website TruthOut, is among hundreds of people who have signed a petition (lavenajohnson.com) demanding that the Army reopen the investigation. "They need to get to the bottom of whether she was a suicide or murder victim," Wright says. Meanwhile, at a hearing before the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform in April 2007, Congressman William Lacy Clay Jr. (D--MO) said the Johnson family has been "met by a wall of disrespect, evasion, and a failure to provide them with the answers that the parents of any fallen soldier deserve." Now, as a result of pressure from Congressman Clay and the Johnson family, officials "are looking into the case," according to a House Armed Services Committee spokeswoman, to determine if they should pursue a formal investigation of the matter.

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News & Politics

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• Pvt. Lavena L. Johnson
• Non Combat Deaths.org
• jim fetzer

[centurion180ad]

Switching back to a draft is a catastrophically bad idea.

We The People don’t decide a God damn thing about war. It is the foreign Debt Syndicate that controls everything that forces us to go to war. Dragging in a few billionaires’ sons & daughters is not going to deter foreign bankers from fighting wars down to the last American.

The more warfare evolves the less effective conscripts become, to a near zero today. It requires too long to go from inductee to fully prepared warrior.

[centurion180ad]

The base PFC Johnson was stationed on was infested with KBR, CACI, Halliburton & XE mercenaries that operate to this day, above & outside anything even remotely resembling law.

It is a matter of Debt Syndicate Performa that a mercenary hired to cover heroin operations, may utilize 00 license-to-kill. This is power glaringly ripe for personal exploitation, so it is.

Private First Class LaVena Lynn Johnson was tortured, raped & executed.

[tom1yum2goong]

we need to find out who did this to the beautiful women

[IceManLikeGervin]

Something was covered up- point blank.smh

Some of those military folks are pure evil mad dog killer.

Sam ain't my uncle.

rip

[Prettylegs]

Why isn't this posted on "The Black Talk Stations?" 65% of our Back men and women is in the military. This could be your daughter, son, niece, granddaughter.. Why isn't more news coverage about this incident??? I'm in shock!