Slain soldier told kin to investigate if she died
By Mike Underwood, Wednesday, October 3, 2007
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The Quincy soldier mysteriously slain by a bullet to the head on a secure Afghanistan airbase feared something might happen to her after discovering “something she didn’t like,” her devastated family revealed.
Massachusetts National Guard Spc. Ciara Durkin, 30, was found with a single gunshot wound to her head behind a building at Bagram Airbase on Sept. 27.
“The last time she was home she said she had seen things that she didn’t like and she had raised concerns that had annoyed some people,” said Durkin’s sister Fiona Canavan, 44, of Quincy.
“She said, and I thought she was joking, that if anything happened to her we had to investigate.”
Canavan said she did not know what her baby sister had seen or whom she had told, and she rejected the notion that Durkin committed suicide. The military has not answered the family’s questions about her death, she added.
Publicly, the military will only say her death is under investigation.
Canavan said Durkin was openly gay, but she did not believe that had anything to do with her death.
Bay State political leaders are also demanding answers from the U.S. military’s top brass.
Sen. John F. Kerry has written to U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates while Sen. Edward M. Kennedy and U.S. Rep. William D. Delahunt (D-Quincy) have contacted Army Secretary Pete Geren.
Kennedy said he has spoken to Geren to make sure the family’s concerns are known and addressed at the highest level while Delahunt wrote to Geren.
Ireland’s Department of Foreign Affairs has also weighed in, confirming it contacted U.S. officials in Dublin and Washington after a plea for answers from Durkin’s relatives in Ireland.
Durkin was assigned to the 726th Finance Battalion, Massachusetts Army National Guard at Bagram Airbase where she helped make sure soldiers in Afghanistan got paid.
“(The military) is definitely holding back,” said Canavan. “As to why we can only speculate.”
She said it could take anywhere from three weeks to three months for her sister’s autopsy report to be released.
Officials initially told the family Durkin was “killed in action” but changed their story over the weekend, saying she perished from “non-combat related” injuries.
Durkin was deployed to Afghanistan in February and was due to return home in January. Her funeral is Saturday at St. John’s Parish Church on School Street, Quincy.
