SGT. DONALD WALTERS

MILITARY DETERMINES SOLDIER CAPTURED, THEN KILLED

From "The Tulsa World," Tulsa, Oklahoma, Friday, May 28, 2004

SALEM, Ore. (AP) -- A soldier listed as killed in action while riding in the same doomed convoy as former prisoner of war Jessica Lynch actually had been captured by Iraqi fighters before he was killed, the Oregon National Guard said Thursday.

More than a year after the March 23, 2003, ambush, the military released new details to the family of Sgt. Donald Walters, 33, of Salem, Ore.

The Pentagon investigated his death after his mother filed Freedom of Information requests, believing that the Army had not given her son credit for actions first attributed to Lynch, such as fighting until his ammunition had run out.

"He was executed -- shot twice in the back," a Guard spokesman, Maj. Arnold Strong, said Thursday. "An Iraqi ambulance driver witnessed six fedayeen rebels standing outside a building guarding him while he was still alive. That same witness evacuated his dead body to a hospital."

Defense investigators confirmed the account by matching Walters' DNA to blood splattered on the wall where he was executed, Strong said. After her rescue, Lynch said she did not fire a shot.

"What upset me was they admitted it wasn't Jessica Lynch, but they never bothered to find out who that soldier was," Walters' mother, Arlene, said late Thursday.

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