Fort Hood Searchers Find Dead Soldier
By MICHELLE ROBERTS
Associated Press Writer
FORT HOOD, Texas (AP) -- Army investigators were trying to piece together how an experienced soldier died after disappearing during a training exercise and going missing for four days.
Searchers found the body of Sgt. Lawrence G. Sprader on Tuesday on the rugged Central Texas Army post where he went missing four days earlier. He was on a solo exercise to test basic map-reading and navigation skills, said Col. Diane Battaglia, a III Corps spokeswoman at Fort Hood.
The body was sent for an autopsy and the cause of death had not been determined, she said.
Sprader, 25, was one of nearly 320 noncommissioned officers being trained as part of a two-week leadership course.
Nine other soldiers got lost during the three-hour exercise, but all except Sprader got back to the rally point safely by following the sound of a siren that blasts when time is up, Battaglia said.
Reached on his cell phone two hours after the exercise was over, Sprader told commanders he wanted to finish the drill.
The hilly terrain at the base can be difficult to navigate and contains poisonous snakes and other hazards.
During the search for Sprader, hundreds of soldiers scoured the 15,000-acre training range. Post officials said no other soldier had ever been lost on the heavily used range long enough to prompt such a huge search.
Motorists reported seeing a soldier matching Sprader's description near a road Friday evening. One sighting was on the eastern edge of the post and another on the far northern edge, making it difficult to concentrate on one area, Battaglia said.
The sightings, and Sprader's score card from the exercise, were the last signs of him, although Battaglia wasn't certain where the card was found.
Sprader returned from an Iraq deployment in September and worked in the criminal investigation division of Fort Hood. The Prince George, Va., soldier had no orders for redeployment to the war zone.
© 2007 The Associated Press