Army finalizes discharge for veteran mistakenly jailed as AWOL
WASHINGTON — The Army will issue a discharge certificate to a former soldier who was arrested and held in Florida jails for 12 days last month because the military considered him absent without leave nine years after he was chaptered out.
Louie Castro, 28, who was to have been given an other-than-honorable discharge in December 2002 and who says he had thought his military service was long behind him, was arrested Jan. 2 as he re-entered the United States after a trip to France. Army officials had demanded that he fly to Fort Carson, Colo. — a base where he had never served, but where the 4th Infantry Division moved in 2009 — as a condition of being let out of jail.
Internal Army emails obtained by Stars and Stripes about Castro’s case suggest that back in 2002, his unit took him around Fort Hood, Tex. to various out-processing stations, but failed to get his final orders and “Certificate of Release or Discharge from Active Duty,” known more commonly as a DD-214. Army officials had written on Jan. 30 that there was no way to finalize Castro’s paperwork without him traveling to Colorado.
Stars and Stripes published a story about Castro’s situation on Friday morning. However, a spokesman for the 4th Infantry Division wrote in an email to Stars and Stripes late Friday that Castro will not be required to travel to the base, but was instead being “out-processed in absentia and should receive a DD-214 in the near future.”
“We cannot speak to the specific circumstances on why Pvt. Castro did not receive a DD-214 nine years ago,” Lt. Col. Steve Wollman wrote. “Fort Carson officials learned of Pvt. Castro’s situation [last] week and took action to address the problem of the missing DD-214.”
Wollman’s statement also emphasized that the military was not seeking “any type of punishment” in Castro’s case.
Now a student at Florida State University, Castro enlisted in the Army in February 2001, but went AWOL for more than a year that summer. However, he was caught and returned to Fort Hood in August 2002 and returned to active duty for five months before then-Maj. Gen. Raymond T. Odierno signed paperwork approving his request for a discharge in lieu of court-martial.
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@billmurphyjr
