Justice demanded for Sgt. Elder Fernandes at Brockton vigil

BROCKTON, Mass. — Public officials and family members demanded justice for Army Sgt. Elder Fernandes as they remembered the 23-year-old Brockton High School graduate in a vigil Friday.

Fernandes had been missing for more than a week before his body was found hanging from a tree in Temple, Texas, about 30 miles north of Fort Hood, where he was stationed.

“Give them justice!” U.S. Rep. Stephen Lynch said outside Brockton City Hall Friday night. “We cannot give them their son back, but we can give them a measure of justice that they have earned and they deserve.”

Lynch recently returned from a trip to Fort Hood, where he met Fernandes’s mother as well as all officers in Fernandes’s chain of command, demanding documents and information.

MORE: Missing Fort Hood soldier reported sexual abuse months before disappearance, Army official says

Prior to Fernandes’s disappearance, he had reported being sexually assaulted by a superior. The male superior had grabbed his buttocks, he alleged.

Army Criminal Investigations Division special agent Damon Phelps said the subject of Fernandes’s allegation passed a polygraph test and there were no witnesses to the alleged crime. The allegation was found to be unsubstantiated.

Temple police found no evidence of foul play in Fernandes’s death.

But family and public officials say the military mishandled Fernandes’s case and led to the tragedy.

In April, another Fort Hood soldier, Pfc. Vanessa Guillen, 20, disappeared after reporting being sexually harassed. Her dismembered body was later found. Guillen’s suspected killer fatally shot himself when confronted by police.

MORE: Texas authorities searching for missing Fort Hood soldier, latest in string of disappearances

“We’re not supposed to lose soldiers in our own homeland,” said Brockton City Councilor Moises Rodrigues, who organized the vigil. “There’s something ill going on at Fort Hood.”

Fernandes had come to the United States as a boy from Cape Verde. His family says he was proud to serve as a chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear specialist with the 1st Cavalry Division Sustainment Brigade.

“He chose to be there,” said Fernandes’s aunt, Leonilde Fernandes, before dozens in attendance holding candles and pictures of her nephew. “No one forced him to go there. But he chose to be there. He’s a Cape Verdean, but he chose to come to this country to serve this country.”

Fernandes will be buried in Brockton with military honors.

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