The 25-year-old Army sergeant from Glendale was among four soldiers who died in armored vehicles drawn from a marsh in Lithuania, the army said Tuesday.
Sergeant. Edvin F. Franco of Glendale was identified as one of the soldiers who died in the M88 Hercules vehicle. The body of the fourth soldier was recovered after a week of searching in a peat marsh at the training grounds in Sylvestras in the town of Pabrado.
Soldiers who were part of the 1st Armored Brigade Combat Team, the 3rd Infantry Division, had undergone tactical training exercises when they were reported missing a week ago, the Army said.
Franco was also a tank system maintainer for M1 Abrams, who had been in the Army for over six years. He deployed to Korea in 2020 and to Germany in 2022.
Squadron commander Colonel Madison K. Wellence told The Associated Press Franco’s “infectious smile and true joy of being with his team coincided with tenacity and drive alone.
Sergeant. Jose Duenes Jr., 25, PFC of Joliet, Illinois. Dante D. Titano, 21, of Dededo, Guam, was also identified Tuesday. The identity of the fourth soldier killed in the training accident has not been announced.
“The past week has been devastating. Today, our minds carry the weight of our ultimate loss of dogface soldiers and the unbearable pain,” Major General Christopher Norley, commander of the 3rd Infantry Division Division, said in a statement Tuesday. “We’ve had some closure, but the world is dark without them.”
The search in the thick forests and swamps included hundreds of Lithuanian and US soldiers and rescue team members. The 63-ton armored vehicle was found to have been submerged in about 15 feet of water on March 26th.
It took me a few days to pull a heavy vehicle out of the marsh using steel cables. Excavation rigs, floodgates, slurry pumps, and other heavy construction equipment were used for the search.
General Christopher Donohue, commander of the US Army Europe and Africa, expressed his gratitude to the US allies who sent troops and equipment to help them search and recover.
“We can’t say enough about the support our Lithuanian allies have provided us. We leaned against them. They allowed our Polish and Estonian allies, and our own seafarers, air force and engineer experts to find us and take us home,” Donahue said in a statement. “This is a tragic event, but it reinforces the meaning of having an alliance or friend.”
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