Marine Corps News, news from Iraq - Marine Corps Times

Tip led troops to missing soldier

A tip from an Iraqi led U.S. troops to the remains of Staff Sgt. Matt Maupin north of Baghdad, an Army spokesman confirmed Tuesday.

Maupin disappeared almost four years ago, on April 9, 2004, south of Baghdad when insurgents attacked his convoy using rocket-propelled grenades and small-arms fire. The Army announced Monday that Maupin’s remains and a bit of his uniform had been found and identified.

Maupin’s remains were found March 20 in a primarily agricultural region 10 to 15 miles northwest of Baghdad by soldiers from 1st Battalion, 21st Infantry Regiment, said Lt. Col. Steve Stover, a spokesman for Multi-National Division-Baghdad.

The unit belongs to the 2nd Stryker Brigade Combat Team, 25th Infantry Division. While in Iraq, the unit is attached to the 2nd Stryker Cavalry Regiment.

Maupin’s remains are being examined at the Armed Forces Medical Examiner’s office in Rockville, Md., said Paul Stone, spokesman for the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology.

Experts are conducting a post-mortem exam to see if it’s possible to determine what caused Maupin’s death, Stone said.

The tip the soldiers received was the result of reconciliation efforts in that area, which is heavily Sunni, Stover said.

“We knew about the 20th, we had a good idea based on the tip … that it was him, but you never know for sure,” he said.

The Army never stopped looking for Maupin, said Stover, who recalled his last deployment to Iraq and the search for Maupin during that time.

“When this came around, a lot of us who had been here before, you hope that it is [Maupin] so you can bring him home,” Stover said.

Maupin’s remains arrived in the States on Saturday and were identified using dental and DNA tests later that night, Stone said.

“After a long wait, we want to offer our most sincere condolences to Carolyn and Keith Maupin on the loss of their son,” Army Secretary Pete Geren said in a statement.

“This has been especially difficult for the Maupin family because of not knowing for almost exactly four years,” Defense Secretary Robert Gates said in a statement Monday. “I just wanted to extend my condolences.”

The Army told Maupin’s parents about the discovery during a meeting Sunday in Ohio.

“My heart sinks, but I know they can’t hurt him anymore,” Keith Maupin said, according to the Associated Press.

“It hurts,” Carolyn Maupin told the AP. “After you go through almost four years of hope, and this is what happens, it’s like a letdown, so I’m trying to get through that right now.”

Maupin, a 24-year-old from Batavia, Ohio, had been listed as missing-captured since April 16, 2004.

A week after he disappeared, the Arab television network Al-Jazeera aired a videotape showing a stunned-looking Maupin wearing camouflage and a floppy desert hat, sitting on the floor surrounded by five masked men holding automatic rifles.

That June, Al-Jazeera aired another tape purporting to show a U.S. soldier being shot. But the dark and grainy tape showed only the back of the victim’s head and not the execution.

Maupin’s status was changed on March 31 to deceased.

Maupin enlisted Oct. 9, 2002, and was assigned to the Army Reserve’s 724th Transportation Company in Bartonville, Ill. He was a private first class when he was captured, but was promoted three times while he was missing, most recently to staff sergeant in August 2006.

Maupin’s parents, Keith and Carolyn, have actively pursued information about their son’s whereabouts, traveling to the Pentagon and to Army briefings for any new piece of information they could learn. They also founded the Yellow Ribbon Support Center and have worked to provide moral support, care packages, college scholarships and encouragement to deployed troops and their families.

“The Maupins are people of modest means with great big hearts, and they’ve touched the lives of thousands,” Geren said in his statement. “His parents are helping others with soldiers in harm’s way, just like their son, from the Yellow Ribbon Support Center in Cincinnati. The Maupins selflessly serve as a funnel for the generosity of people across America.”

Three other U.S. soldiers remain missing in Iraq.

Sgt. Ahmed Altaie, also an Army Reserve soldier, was forcibly taken by masked gunmen in a Baghdad neighborhood Oct. 23, 2006, while visiting family. The Army said Altaie had gone on his own outside the fortified Green Zone to see his Iraqi wife, whom he had married before deploying to Iraq, when he disappeared.

Altaie, 41, is an Iraqi-born resident of Ann Arbor, Mich.

Also missing are two soldiers from 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 10th Mountain Division.

Spc. Alex Jimenez, 25, and Pvt. Byron Fouty, 19, disappeared after a May 12, 2007, ambush south of Baghdad that also took the lives of seven fellow soldiers and an Iraqi interpreter.

Six of the soldiers were killed at the scene, and the body of a seventh soldier who had been missing since the attack was found May 23 in the Euphrates River.

Jimenez and Fouty are assigned to 4th Battalion, 31st Infantry Regiment at Fort Drum, N.Y.

“I want to say this once again to the families of our other captured soldiers in Iraq,” Geren said. “We will not stop searching for your loved ones.”

Related reading:

Maupin’s parents thank supporters at parade

DISCUSS: The homecoming of Staff Sgt. Maupin