Monday’s death of a female soldier at a Texas Army base is being investigated as a suicide, according to reports.
Family members told Spanish news outlet Telemundo that the death of Private Ana Basalduaruiz, 21, a combat engineer at Fort Hood, was preliminarily deemed a suicide. Ruiz served 15 months with the First Calvary Division prior to her death.
Speaking with ABC News, Basalduaruiz’s family said she told her mother last month that she was being sexually harassed. Her family reportedly offered to pick her up from the base.
Basalduaruiz’s mother told Telemundo that Basalduaruiz said she was constantly facing sexual advances at Fort Hood.
“She told me: ‘Mom, everyone wants me to sleep with them, but they (expletive),’” she recalled.
Basalduaruiz’s mother also said she last spoke to her daughter on March 8, five days before her death.
“She told me that she was very sad, that a lot of very strong things were happening, that things were not as normal as I thought, that she couldn’t tell me much, but that there was going to be a moment when we were going to be together and she could say everything.”
Officials told KWTX that the Army Criminal Investigation Division is looking into Basalduaruiz’s death.
Another female soldier at Fort Hood, Vanessa Guillen, vanished from the base in April 2020 after levying sexual harassment complaints. Her body was found two months later, dismembered, burned, and covered by concrete and rocks along the Leon River.
The superior Guillen accused of harassment, Army Specialist Aaron Robinson, 20, allegedly confessed to the slaying to his girlfriend, Cecily Aguilar, who is charged with helping to dismember and conceal Guillen’s body.
Robinson fled Fort Hood and killed himself as law enforcement closed in. In November, Aguliar pleaded guilty to being an accessory after the fact and making a false statement. She is awaiting sentencing.
Check back for updates.
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[Featured image: Ana Basalduaruiz/Facebook]
