http://www.armytimes.com/story.php?f=0-ARMYPAPER-2152000.phpAt least one family, and possibly two, want independent opinions on what caused the deaths of their loved ones after they became ill in Iraq.
In a letter to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, the Bellville, Texas, family of Army Spc. Zeferino Colunga requested medical records, personal effects and blood and tissue samples of the 20-year-old soldier.
Colunga, of the 4th Squadron, 2nd Armored Calvary Regiment, died Aug. 6 at Homburg Hospital in Germany, after he fell ill in Iraq. The family was told he had pneumonia and acute leukemia, his 19-year-old sister, Teresa Colunga, said.
“We gave the military my brother alive,” she said. “They gave him back to us dead. I want to find out what happened.”
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“We as a family are concerned that we are not being told the truth,” the letter states. The family wants “immediate access” to all personal effects and property, medical records, medical evacuation reports, staff journal reports, disease and nonbattle injury reports, pre-deployment screening reports, predeployment serum and blood, postmortem tissue and blood samples, postmortem medical reports, cause-of-death reports, epidemiological survey reports, endemic disease reports, vaccine injury reports and any other similar reports “that will assist us in understanding the cause of death.”