Soldier killed in head-on crash on German highway was surface-to-surface artillery sergeant

GRAFENWOEHR, Germany — A soldier who died last month in a fiery crash on a German federal highway in Bavaria has been identified as a noncommissioned officer on his first overseas deployment.

Sgt. Jason Paun, 22, from Loganville, Ga., who died in the crash on the morning of Aug. 28, was a crew member on a tracked M270 Multiple Launch Rocket System with 1st Battalion, 77th Field Artillery Regiment, said Maj. Edward Alvarado, a spokesman for V Corps, in an emailed statement Wednesday.

Paun was killed shortly after 9 a.m. when his BMW crossed the center line of the B299 highway north of Gebenbach and struck a tractor-trailer, German police from Sulzbach-Rosenberg said in a statement that day.

Paun’s battalion is part of the 41st Field Artillery Brigade, based at Tower Barracks in Grafenwoehr.

“We are deeply saddened by the loss of Sgt. Jason Paun,” said the soldier’s battalion commander, Lt. Col. Scott Clark, in the V Corps statement. He called Paun “well-respected” and a “role model” to those around him.

“His loss is felt throughout our entire formation,” Clark said.

Paun enlisted in the Army in January 2023 and arrived in Bavaria in August of that year, Alvarado said.

He was one of two soldiers driving north in separate high-performance BMWs just past the village of Kainsricht, in the direction of Tower Barracks, when both lost control and crossed into the opposite lane, the police statement said.

Paun’s M2 first struck a guardrail on the left side of the road before skidding into a 40-ton semitruck hauling gravel, Tobias Ploessl, a Sulzbach-Rosenbach Police detective, told Stars and Stripes three days after the crash. Both the M2 and the tractor-trailer burst into flames. Paun was trapped in the wreckage and died at the scene.

The 30-year-old driver of the second BMW and the 41-year-old driver of the tractor-trailer received only minor injuries, the statement said.

German police are currently investigating whether Paun and the other soldier, who was driving an X4 with a high-powered engine, were illegally racing, Ploessl said Thursday. That investigation could take months to complete. The surviving soldier has not spoken with police about the circumstances surrounding the crash, Ploessl said.

An Army investigation also remains open, Alvarado said. He said it would be “inappropriate to speculate” on whether the second soldier will face charges.

Gebenbach is about 20 miles south of the major U.S. Army training hub at Tower Barracks

Stars and Stripes reporter Marcus Kloeckner contributed to this report.