posted by Jennifer Hlad on Jan 28
Lt. Leah Wicks, who served as a platoon commander with the Army’s 66th Military Police company at the time of the incident, testified this morning by phone. Wicks is still in Afghanistan, and the phone connection was often spotty, forcing Wicks to repeat herself numerous times and creating breaks when the call would disconnect and lawyers had to try to call her back.
Wicks said one of the Army squads arrived at the blast site about 15 minutes after MSOC-F left. The second squad arrived about 30 minutes later, she said.
The squads told Wicks there was a “growing hostility in the crowd.” They tried to divert traffic using the Afghan National Police.
Wicks arrived about an hour later and said “the civilian populus was hostile to American forces,” more hostile than she had seen people in that area before. No soldiers went west of the bridge because of the crowd, Wicks said.
The soldiers did ask the Afghan National Police unit to go up on the hill and do a sweep, looking for shell casings. But the police officers did not find any, Wicks said.
The American soldiers did find indications of small arms fire, Wicks said, including brass shell casings on the ground, a bullet-laden SUV, and people complaining of being shot.
The soldiers set up a perimeter about 300 meters around the blast site, and they found brass extending to the far side of the bridge as far as the perimeter, she said.
The brass they found was primarily on the north shoulder of the road, and trees on the side of the road had been damaged by bullets, Wicks said.
The blue Prado SUV appeared to have about 200 bullet holes in it, but no brass shell casings or bodies inside or around it, Wicks said. Though another soldier reported seeing blood, brain matter and an upper jaw in the vehicle, Wicks said she only remembers seeing large amounts of blood.
The soldiers collected “all the brass we could find,” mainly for 50-caliber weapons and the type of ammunition used in the 240 Golf, the weapon mounted on top of many of the Humvees. It was about 75 of the 240 Golf rounds and 50 of the 50-caliber rounds, and they all went into an evidence bag, which was stored.
A week before NCIS agents arrived to investigate the incident, someone accidently threw away the bag during a routine clean-up, Wicks said. Col. Pihana had not asked for the brass during his investigation, she said.
Wicks said they had gotten information about possible Taliban and Al Qaeda elements in that area, but that they often had similar reports of Taliban and Al Qaeda in Markoh Bazaar.
The soldiers consider that area one of the more dangerous, but not enough to restrict their movements, Wicks said.
Though the first team arrived on the scene just 10 to 15 minutes after MSOC-F left, they saw no injured people or dead bodies, other than the body parts of the suicide bomber.
Wicks said she had heard reports that bodies had been taken to nearby houses, but they were not able or allowed to examine the bodies.