Post date: Mar 18, 2012 6:25:42 PM
NEAR JOINT BASE LEWIS-MCCHORD (NBC) - The U.S. soldier implicated in the massacre of 16 villagers in Afghanistan is remembered by friends as a happy man, one they could not see committing such an atrocity.
Friends of U.S. Army Staff Sergeant Robert Bales - who is accused of killing 16 civilians in Afghanistan - react to news of the alleged shooting massacre.
"Happy guy, full of life. I really wouldn't expect it," Kassie Holland, a friend and neighbor in Lake Tapps, Washington, said.
U.S. Army Staff Sergeant Robert Bales, a four-tour combat veteran, is suspected of walking off his base in southern Afghanistan last Sunday (March 11) and gunning down the 16 civilians, including nine children and three women, in a massacre that sent American-Afghan relations into a tailspin.
Bales, 38, whose military unit is based south of Tacoma, Washington, had been held in Kuwait after he was flown out of Afghanistan on Wednesday. He has not yet been charged.
He is in solitary confinement at a military detention center at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, where he arrived late on Friday (March 16).
Steve Burling attended high school with Bales in Ohio. He remembers a friendly young man, who was skilled in both academics and sports.
"He was one of the better football players and captain and always a heavy lifter in the weight room, very outgoing, funny, big smile," Burling said.
A U.S. Army statement said Bales had spent a total of 37 months in three deployments in Iraq between 2003 and 2010.
Bales' civilian attorney, John Henry Browne, said Bales experienced violence firsthand during that time.
"He saw people killed literally standing right next to him and there was an incident right before these allegations where one of his fellow soldiers was mortally wounded," Browne said.
Bales' wife, Karilyn, and two young children have been moved into military lodging at Joint Base Lewis-McChord outside of Tacoma, Browne said earlier in the week.