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Death of combat vet announced 4 months later

OCEANSIDE, Calif. — Pentagon officials announced this week the death of Marine Lance Cpl. Angel R. Ramirez more than four months after he was pronounced dead at the naval hospital at the Marine Corps Air-Ground Combat Center in Twentynine Palms, Calif.

Ramirez, who was assigned to 3rd Battalion, 4th Marines, had been evacuated from Iraq in December and was pronounced dead at the naval hospital Feb. 21, said Capt. Mike Alvarez, a 1st Marine Division spokesman. A command investigation into his death is nearly completed.

“Right now, they are putting the final touches on the investigation,” Alvarez said.

Ramirez, a 28-year-old from Brooklyn, N.Y., who enlisted in 1999, had been wounded Dec. 21 in a “non-hostile” incident in al-Qaim — a city on Iraq’s western border — and was medically evacuated stateside, officials said.

The Defense Department, which regularly issues announcements on casualties related to military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, hadn’t announced Ramirez’s death because there was a “mix-up” in how his death would be classified, officials said. It “was delayed due to an administrative adjustment to the Marine’s original death classification,” Defense Department officials said in the announcement.

Alvarez said that service members who die within 120 days of returning home from Iraq as the result of wounds received in theater “can still be classified as a theater casualty.” The death was reported by the 1st Marine Division in a timely fashion, as it was supposed to, he said.