LOS ANGELES (KNX) — Army Spc. Enrique Roman-Martinez was found dead almost two years ago, after a camping trip with six other soldiers in North Carolina.
On Thursday, his family pleaded for justice in the case.
Roman-Martinez, a Chino, Calif. Native, was reported missing from North Carolina’s Fort Bragg in May 2020, just after the Memorial Day camping trip. Days later, the 21-year-old’s body was found beheaded. To date, no murder charges have been filed.
Roman-Martinez’s sister spoke with KNX, sharing her frustration about the lack of information from the Army.
“The thing that makes me the most mad is…[in August or September], they told me that they weren’t going to press charges, they weren’t going to do anything really,” Griselda Martinez said, explaining that her brother’s death was then classified as a “cold case.”
Martinez said her frustration with the Army stems from the fact that officials did not tell her family when the case ceased to be cold — or when charges were filed against three soldiers who were with her brother before he disappeared.
In a statement shared with Task & Purpose last August, Lt. Col. Brett Lea said the charges against the officers are “unrelated” to Roman-Martinez’s death. The three men were charged with making false official statements, drug use, conspiracy to make false statements and willfully disobeying a superior officer.
Lea added that their charges relate to the actions taken by the soldiers “during and after Roman-Martinez’s disappearance.”
In a press conference Thursday, the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC) called for a “full federal probe into the beheading” and called to double the existing $50,000 reward to $100,000 for information leading to the arrest of Roman-Martinez’s killer(s).
“We ask that the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) and the FBI relieve the Army of any further efforts to find the truth and hold accountable all those who are involved in this horrendous murder,” Jose Barrera, LULAC California director said while reading a letter from the organization’s national president.
Following the organization’s demands that the Army remove itself from the murder investigation, Roman-Martinez’s sister Griseld took to the podium to speak about her brother’s Army recruitment and later death.
“When the army recruiters came to my home and promised my mother that the way he was leaving…is how he’s going to come back…and three and a half years later my brother’s severed head is the only thing we get back. That’s it,” Martinez said, visibly upset over the two-year investigation with little to no information leading to arrests.
“You'd think that the Army would do anything they can [to solve the case], this was one of their own. And from what they told me one of the ones that worked the hardest, that worked the weekends, that went to extremes to make sure his work was done.”
Following Roman-Martinez’s death, fellow soldiers on the camping trip said he had been suicidal in the past and that they had gone to park rangers for help when he went missing. But Martinez said her family knew of her brother’s plan after the Army and knows that he would have not taken his own life.
“We know it wasn’t suicide. Both autopsy reports, even the one that the Army did itself, said that this was not done by a boat propeller…it had to have been done by an instrument — but it remains inconclusive which instrument because they don’t have the whole body.”
With the lack of information coming from the Army’s investigation, LULAC has requested that both the FBI and DOJ to take charge of the investigation as the Army “has proved its inability to get the job done correctly.”
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