Thursday, 4:30 PM
Kerry calls for investigation of Quincy soldier's death
(John Bohn / Globe Staff)
By Michael Levenson, Globe Staff
US Senator John F. Kerry today called on the Defense Department to thoroughly investigate the death of Ciara Durkin, a 30-year-old Quincy resident and member of the Massachusetts National Guard who died Friday in Afghanistan.
In a letter, Kerry urged Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates "to deploy your staff on this matter immediately so that the answers and circumstances around Specialist Durkin's death are uncovered, expeditiously and thoroughly."
The Defense Department has said Durkin died of a "non-combat related incident" and that it is investigating. Durkin's family has said Durkin was found with a single bullet in her head, lying near her church on the secure Bagram Airbase. The Massachusetts National Guard initially reported that Durkin was killed in action, though a Guard spokesman said later that the term was meant to imply only that she had been deployed in Afghanistan at the time.
"As you can imagine," Kerry wrote Gates, "the confusion and potential misreporting around Specialist Durkin's death have added to what is already an extraordinarily painful time for her mother, her siblings and her extended family, here in Massachusetts and in Ireland."
Durkin, who is one of nine children, was born in Ireland and moved to Massachusetts at age 9.
Kerry said the Durkin family desperately needs answers to three questions:
1. Why has the Army not responded to the Durkin family's request for an independent autopsy?
2. Why, after not responding to the family's request for an independent autopsy, did the Army fail to contact the Durkin family with the Army's autopsy results? The family was told to be available to receive a phone call between 1 and 3 PM on October 1 and the Army never
called.
3. Why has the Army refused to make Specialist Durkin's will and paperwork available to her family so they can respect her wishes as they plan her funeral and burial?
Lieutenant Colonel Jonathan Withington, a Defense Department spokesman, said today, "We have not received a letter yet, and when the secretary does receive a letter, he will respond to the senator."
