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Soldier’s Cause of Death is in Doubt

U.S. Fire Might Have Killed a Former Stayton Resident’s Husband

Saturday, March 30, 2002
Statesman Journal Staff



Statesman Journal reporter Alex Davis contributed to this report.



The only negative aspect of Friday’s news, Harriman said, was that [Gen. Tommy] Franks didn’t call her to explain the investigation. She said the military base at Fort Bragg also didn’t know anything about the new theory. She found out shortly after noon Friday when a television news crew rolled into her driveway for an interview.

A U.S. Special Forces soldier killed this month in the opening hours of a major offensive in eastern Afghanistan might have died in fire from an American gunship, a top Army commander said Friday.

Chief Warrant Officer Stanley Harriman, the husband of former Stayton resident Sheila Harriman, died March 2 while accompanying a convoy of Afghan troops.

The unit was heading toward a battlefield during Operation Anaconda, the war’s largest ground engagement involving U.S. forces.

Gen. Tommy Franks, the U.S. commander-in-chief for Afghanistan, said he asked for a review of the March 2 incident because a disturbing “coincidence” raises the possibility that Harriman, 34, was killed in a “friendly fire” incident.

While it was believed at the time that Harriman and several Afghan fighters died in an al-Qaida mortar barrage, Franks said an American AC-130 gunship reported engaging an enemy convoy at about the same time.

Sheila Harriman, reached at her home in Wade, N.C., said the development wouldn’t have any bearing on the way she remembers her husband’s service.
(More: The Statesman Journal News Source)
2002 © Statesman Journal, Salem, Oregon.

Dan