The Morning Blend
Welcome
Complete Media Kit
WASHINGTON — Pfc. Eli Mundt Baker died earlier this year of negligent homicide due to a morphine overdose, according to spokesman for the Army’s Criminal Investigation Command.
Baker, 22, who was a soldier assigned to Fort Huachuca’s Warrior Transition Unit, was not prescribed morphine and “there is reason to believe somebody supplied it to him,” Christopher Grey said Wednesday.
The Herald/Review has requested a copy of the 10-month-long investigation conducted by the post’s Criminal Investigation Detachment. Baker, who was from Foothill Ranch, Calif., was declared dead shortly after 9 a.m. on Jan. 28 after Military Police and emergency medical personnel responded to a 9-1-1 call to the Warrior Transition Unit barracks, according to post officials.
Prior to being assigned to the unit, Baker was attending advanced individual training at the Intelligence Center and was waiting for reclassification or a medical discharge, post spokeswoman Tanja Linton has previously said. The soldier had never deployed.
|
|
Grey said it will be up to Fort Huachuca’s staff Judge Advocate officer and other officials on post to determine if any charges will be filed against anyone who may have provided the morphine to Baker.
Linton said, “No charges have been preferred in this case, nor are there any pending charges.”
Baker was the first of two soldiers to have been found dead in the Warrior Transition Unit barracks this year.
On Nov. 8, Pvt. Paul Muse, 22, of Sperry, Okla., was declared dead in the barracks, again after MPs and emergency personnel responded. According to Muse’s father, his son was recuperating from a surgery that removed a tumor from his brain stem.
Two days before his son died, the soldier complained that his head and ears had swollen, the father told a newspaper in Oklahoma on Nov. 15.
His son, who was waiting to be medically discharged, died of natural causes, the father said.
Muse was a member of Company B, 40th Signal Battalion, and he had never deployed, although he was supposed to go with his unit to Iraq prior to be diagnosed with his medical problem.
Herald/Review senior reporter Bill Hess can be reached at 515-4615 or by e-mail at bill.hess@svherald.com.
