An airman remembers Capt. David Wisniewski during a service Thursday inside the Thunderbirds hangar at Nellis Air Force Base. Wisniewski died July 2 from injuries after his helicopter crashed amid hostile fire June 9 in Afghanistan.
Military
The Nevada Army National Guard broke ground Saturday on a memorial for five members of a Chinook helicopter crew who were shot down in Afghanistan.
Family, friends, soldiers, sailors and veterans — more than 500 in all — mourned Army Sgt. Matthew R. Hennigan, a 20-year-old paratrooper, Sunday in a cemetery on Eastern Avenue near Warm Springs Road, not far from where he spent most of his life. He died June 30 after being wounded by machine gun fire during an ambush of his platoon in the Tangi Valley, about 40 miles south of Kabul.
An airman from Nellis Air Force Base died Friday from injuries suffered when his helicopter was shot down during a rescue mission in Afghanistan last month.
A 20-year-old Las Vegas paratrooper who died Wednesday in Afghanistan was the last announced Army soldier death this week by the Defense Department, bringing to 1,063 the number of U.S. military personnel who have died in the region since the invasion in late 2001.
“That others may live,” the motto of Air Force rescue teams, was repeated many times during Friday’s memorial service for two airmen from Nellis Air Force Base.
A Las Vegas soldier has been charged with shooting and killing an Afghan civilian in one of three premeditated murders that Army officers allege were committed this year by five soldiers from an armored vehicle combat team, an Army spokeswoman said Wednesday.
Two airmen from Nellis Air Force Base and two others from Davis-Monthan Air Force Base in Arizona were killed when their helicopter crashed Wednesday in Afghanistan’s volatile Helmand province. Three other Nellis airmen were wounded.
KABUL, Afghanistan — U.S. military investigators found that “inaccurate and unprofessional” reporting by a Nevada-based Air Force Predator drone crew was responsible for a missile strike that killed 23 Afghan civilians in February, according to a report released Saturday.
“I searched his hands. Empty. Then his magazine rig. The only sound you could hear was that of his cell phone ringing in his pocket.”
