Remains ID’d as missing guardsman Spc. Ryan K. Longnecker

Remains ID’d as missing guardsman

By Holbrook Mohr - The Associated Press
Posted : Saturday Jun 14, 2008 6:52:37 EDT

JACKSON, Miss. — The human remains found on a Mississippi National Guard base are a Kentucky guardsman who disappeared in 2007, two days before his unit left for Iraq, the military confirmed Friday.

Spc. Ryan K. Longnecker, 19, was training with his Kentucky National Guard unit at Camp Shelby in south Mississippi when he was reported missing on Aug. 6, 2007.

Lt. Col. Doril Sanders, a base spokesman, said Longnecker’s remains were found June 3 in a secluded area of the 136,000-acre base south of Hattiesburg.

Sanders said Longecker’s two military issued weapons, an assault rifle and a pistol, were also found. The military did not release a cause of death and would not say whether Longnecker had ammunition at the time of his disappearance.

Shirley Ann Longnecker, the soldier’s paternal grandmother, said Friday the military is still trying to determine how her grandson died and that his body has been sent for an autopsy.

The remains were found between two roads and “probably a few hundred yards from a building in a secluded area,” Forrest County Coroner Butch Benedict has said.

Longnecker, of Glasgow, Ky., was originally classified as absent without leave and his case was turned over to the U.S. Marshals Service when he was not located.
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