The hidden cost of US military adventures abroad

national | miscellaneous | news report Friday March 21, 2003 17:07 by Mr. Blowback

Fort Bragg probes new domestic violence report

The U.S. Army is probing allegations that another Fort Bragg soldier tried to kill his wife just after returning from Afghanistan. Carol Branch told United Press International that on Dec. 21, her husband, Sgt. Marvin Lee Branch, tried to strangle her after slamming her against the back door of the couple's house on Fort Bragg, seven days after he returned from six months in Afghanistan. Carol Branch said the attack, in front of her three young daughters and 69-year-old mother, was so violent that her 7-year-old daughter tried to defend her with a kitchen knife. "He came at me like a linebacker. He rushed in from the front door to the back door and my back hit the back door," Branch said in a telephone interview from Florida, where she and her three daughters are staying with a friend.

The alleged incident comes just three months after the Army released a report expressing "great concern" about a wave of domestic homicides at Fort Bragg this past summer. The Army said it is investigating this latest incident.
Four Fort Bragg soldiers -- three of whom had been to Afghanistan -- allegedly killed their wives this past summer. Two of those soldiers killed themselves.