TAEGU, South Korea — It was a time to weep Wednesday in the Army’s courtroom at Camp Henry, where a 25-year-old soldier had been found guilty in the stabbing death of another soldier earlier this year and was waiting to be sentenced.
One mother wept for her dead son, 27 — her best friend, she called him. Another mother wept for her son who faced decades, perhaps a lifetime, in prison.
A now-fatherless 9-year-old boy sat in his mother’s lap and cried for the man who had played with him, tickled him and called him from South Korea to ask him about school. The mother, crying for her former husband, placed a hand over the boy’s eyes and rocked him gently.
And a father wept as he pondered how the son he raised in the church had thrown off that upbringing and ended up court-martialed for murder.
Army Col. Patrick J. Parrish, judge, already had declared Pfc. Gregory David Robertson guilty of murdering Sgt. Kenneth Lamond Kelly on Feb. 19 at Camp Carroll. Parrish also found Robertson guilty in a November 2004 sexual misconduct case.
Before Parrish retired to his chambers to weigh the sentence, Kelly’s relatives told the court how the slaying had affected them, Robertson’s mother and father spoke about their son, and Robertson gave a statement.
“I was Kenneth Kelly’s mother,” Barbara Kelly told the court from the witness box. “Kenny was my best friend. … Whenever I needed a hug, I said, ‘Kenny, I need a hug.’ He would hug me.”
When she was recovering from a car accident, he was continually at her side, always watchful and looking to her comfort.
“He went to community college,” she said. “I would fall and I would have to lay there until Kenny came home.” Here her voice began to break, but she continued, through tears, and when she’d finished, left the courtroom. Those in the courtroom could hear long, unfettered cries through the closed door after she’d left.
Kenneth Kelly’s son, Tristan, 9, talked about his father in answer to gentle questioning from Maj. Kevin D. Smith, a prosecutor.
“I would play around with him,” the boy said in a small voice. “He’d tickle me. He would just do everything with me to make me happy.
“He would always call me on the phone” at night, the child told Smith.
What would he talk about with you? Smith asked.
“Like what we learned in school and ‘What did you do today?’ and ‘Did you have fun?’” the boy answered.
Emotions appeared to reach their highest pitch when Robertson’s father, Gregory D. Robertson Sr., spoke.
“I been in the church all my life and I brought my son up in the church,” he said. “Church has been his life. So … it’s ironic that it’s happened like this.
“And I feel for the Kelly family. I know I didn’t say anything to you because I didn’t know if I could say anything to you.”
He was by now looking directly at the Kelly family members seated in the back of the courtroom, including Kelly’s mother, father, ex-wife and son.
“And I’m saying to you right now, ‘I’m sorry.’ I’m sorry for my family. I’m sorry for my son. … I am the head of my family and I feel that I have failed …
“I ask for mercy,” he said, his own voice quavering. “I ask for mercy for my son. I know that you lost a father, a son. I know that you lost a husband. And I can only imagine how that feels with the pain that I feel now. … With the pain I know that there comes a time of healing … and I know that there is going to be a healing time of this.”
Earlier, prosecutor Capt. Trevor I. J. Barna asked 1st Sgt. William Bruns of the 293rd Signal Company how Kelly’s death had affected the unit, where Kelly was a well-liked and motivated sergeant who performed “above his pay grade” and would take quick hold of whatever tasks the unit needed done.
Bruns tried to answer but didn’t get far.
“The effect on the soldiers, uh …” his voice was suddenly thin and strained, “that actually has been hardest for me … because …”
“First sergeant, please take your time,” Barna said.
Bruns was silent, and after about ten seconds, signaled he was ready to resume. “OK,” he said.
“The good days to be a first sergeant are when morale is really high,” he said, his voice still thin and unsteady.
“The first day, on Monday, I said, ‘Fall In!’ … Man, that company was, literally, demolished. … Everybody is just standing there lookin’ at me, ‘Alright, what you got now, First Sergeant?’ … Those were dark days. Those were dark days. … We’re still underneath it and we’re climbing. … The turmoil was well beyond what we thought it was going to be.”
After Parrish announced the sentence, Robertson was placed in handcuffs and chains and driven to the Army’s confinement facility at Camp Humphreys.
