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Absent Without Leave? Or A Missing Person?

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In the United States Army, there are certain protocols regarding soldiers who leave their posts without permission and are considered absent without leave or AWOL. But what happens when a family considers their loved one not AWOL, but a missing person? KMUW’s Abigail Wilson has more…

Each military installation handles AWOL cases in its own way. But the parents of a soldier stationed at Fort Riley in north east Kansas say that when their 19-year-old son suddenly disappeared from his post this summer, there was no one looking for him at all. To protect the identity of their son, the family will not be identified by their real names. So we’ll call them Susan and Dave Miller.

“At the end of the day, my son screwed up. He dishonored his country by going AWOL; that I can’t condone whatsoever,” Dave Miller says. “But you know what? The military could’ve done a whole lot more. I know it’s not 1970 over again but it’s the modern age.”

We talked recently with the Army about what they do when a soldier goes AWOL. Lieutenant Colonel Benjamin Garrett works at the Pentagon in the media relations division for the United States Army. He says he can’t comment on specific cases and has never been in contact with the Millers.

“We don’t actually look for deserters, but they can still be returned to military control by civilian law enforcement at anytime,” Lt. Col. Garrett says.

That’s possible because when a soldier is determined to be AWOL or a deserter, Garrett says their status is reported to military legal authorities who ensure the soldier is entered into a criminal database called the National Crime Information Center or NCIC.

Dave says it took a week for his son to be entered into that database and he never came into contact with civilian police. In the end, it was Dave and Susan that put together the missing pieces to find him. He was missing for 60 days.