Body of missing soldier found on bay shore

[CommunityEditor]

CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas — Searchers continued combing a South Texas bay Sunday for a soldier who authorities believe drove his car off the end of a pier the day after Christmas.

Pfc. Jamie Wagner Sengvanhpheng, 21, was home on leave from Fort Bragg, N.C. and visiting family in Rockport when he disappeared after hanging out with friends at a bar late Christmas night.

His 2004 Acura was found submerged in Copano Bay Friday, but Sengvanhpheng was not inside.

A body had not been recovered so the search continued, a dispatcher with the Aransas County Sheriff’s Office said Sunday.

Older brother James Sengvanhpheng said there were no developments and declined to say more while his brother remained missing.

Authorities first got the call about someone driving on the pier around 1:50 a.m. Friday. At daybreak they found the car in the bay and saw it was registered to Sengvanhpheng. Investigators do not believe anyone else was in the car when it entered the bay, which is about 30 miles north of Corpus Christi.

Jamie Sengvanhpheng’s girlfriend, Morgan Hedgcoth, said late Saturday that things seemed normal when she saw him in the early hours of Christmas Day.

Hedgcoth said Sengvanhpheng had recently talked expectantly about getting a scholarship to start college, though he had never complained to her about his time in the Army. Family members told her divers found the driver’s side window down in the car, giving her hope that he may have escaped, Hedgcoth said.

“I don’t know why he would do this when so many good things were coming his way,” she said.

Sengvanhpheng had planned to stay home until mid-January, Hedgcoth said. The soldier had just transferred from the 20th Engineer Brigade to the Warrior Transition Battalion, said Sgt. Jessica Fimbres, a post spokeswoman. The battalion is usually for soldiers preparing to leave the military for medical or other reasons, though sometimes it’s a holding area while waiting for the Army Medical Board to decide if they can stay in, Fimbres said. She didn’t know details about Sengvanhpheng’s particular situation.

No additional information was available, Fimbres said Sunday.

Jonathan Nguyen, a friend of Sengvanhpheng’s, wrote in an e-mail late Saturday, “he’s a great guy, a very great friend and this didn’t need to happen.”


Article: http://www.militarytimes.com/news/2008/12/ap_missing_soldier_122808/

http://i252.photobucket.com/albums/hh23/aliceamm/Military%20Times/122808_sengvanhpheng_500.jpg
Aransas County Sheriff's Office via AP
This undated image provided by the Aransas County
(Texas) Sheriff's Office shows Jamie Wagner
Sengvanhpheng. Divers are searching a South Texas
bay for the soldier, who authorities believe drove his
car off a pier.

[CommunityEditor]

CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas — The South Texas pier that a missing soldier apparently drove his car off the day after Christmas runs closely parallel to the causeway crossing Copano Bay, but its overseer said Monday there was no way of mistaking it for the road.

“It’s hard to get on that,” said Keith Barrett, harbormaster for the Aransas County Navigation District, which runs the Copano Bay Fishing Pier in Rockport. “You have to get a hard turn.”

Some speculation has circulated among acquaintances of Pfc. Jamie Wagner Sengvanhpheng that the 21-year-old home on leave for the holidays from Fort Bragg, N.C., mistakenly drove out the pier thinking it was the causeway.

Colton Carroll, who graduated a year behind Sengvanhpheng at Rockport-Fulton High School, wrote in an e-mail that he heard Sengvanhpheng intended to cross the causeway, “and he drove straight off into the water instead of going onto the bridge.”

James Sengvanhpheng, Jamie’s brother, said Monday he did not know if his brother was trying to cross the causeway.

Since the pier was once part of the old causeway, it might seem reasonable except that Sengvanhpheng would have had to crash through a metal pipe barricade lined with reflectors, maneuver to miss a barbecue pit and fish-cleaning area and drive more than mile out the pier before crashing through another barricade on the end.

“You could not be thinking you were on the main bridge,” Barrett said.

Both barricades were crushed but there was no damage to the barbecue pit.

The navigation district took control of the piers, which extend into the bay from the north and south, in 2005 from the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department, which had run the piers as a state park since 1967. A hurricane had damaged the middle swing bridge segment of the span and was never replaced. The larger Lyndon Johnson Causeway now parallels the piers.

Barrett said he knew of one other incident more than a decade ago when someone intentionally drove off the end of the pier into the water. He said it appeared Sengvanhpheng’s intentions were the same.

Authorities remain mum about what may have led the soldier to apparently drive off the pier.

Aransas County Sheriff Bill Mills only confirmed in an e-mail Monday that there were no changes in the case.

Authorities first got the call about someone driving on the pier around 1:50 a.m. Friday. At daybreak they found an Acura submerged in the bay and saw it was registered to Sengvanhpheng. Investigators do not believe anyone else was in the car when it entered the bay, which is about 30 miles north of Corpus Christi.

Sengvanhpheng’s girlfriend, Morgan Hedgcoth, said Saturday that things seemed normal when she saw him in the early hours of Christmas Day.

Hedgcoth said Sengvanhpheng had recently talked expectantly about getting a scholarship to start college. Family members told her divers found the driver’s side window down in the car, giving her hope that he may have escaped, Hedgcoth said.

Sengvanhpheng had planned to stay home until mid-January, Hedgcoth said.

The soldier had just transferred from the 20th Engineer Brigade to the Warrior Transition Battalion, said Sgt. Jessica Fimbres, a post spokeswoman. The battalion is usually for soldiers preparing to leave the military for medical or other reasons, though sometimes it’s a holding area while waiting for the Army Medical Board to decide if they can stay in, Fimbres said. She didn’t know details about Sengvanhpheng’s particular situation.


Article: http://www.militarytimes.com/forum/newthread.php?do=newthread&f=24

[CommunityEditor]

ROCKPORT, Texas — The body of a soldier missing since he apparently drove his car off a pier the day after Christmas was found along a shoreline Saturday morning.

Aransas County Sheriff Bill Mills said his office received a call just after 9 a.m. Saturday and recovered the body of Jamie Wagner Sengvanhpheng from Copano Bay, near Corpus Christi and a few miles inland from the Texas Gulf Coast.

Mills said the family was notified and the body was turned over to the Corpus Christi medical examiner for an autopsy. He said he would have no other details before receiving the coroner’s report.

Sengvanhpheng, 21, was home on leave from Fort Bragg, N.C., and visiting family in Rockport, about 30 miles north of Corpus Christi. He disappeared after hanging out with friends at a bar late Christmas night.

His car was found submerged in Copano Bay on Dec. 26, but Sengvanhpheng was not inside. He had driven off the 1 1/4-mile Copano Bay Fishing Pier, crashing through two barricades before reaching the water.

Sengvanhpheng had just transferred from the 20th Engineer Brigade to the Warrior Transition Battalion, Fort Bragg spokeswoman Sgt. Jessica Fimbres said last week.

The battalion is usually for soldiers preparing to leave the military for medical or other reasons, though sometimes it’s a holding area while waiting for the Army Medical Board to decide if they can stay in, Fimbres said. She didn’t have details about Sengvanhpheng’s situation.


Article: http://www.armytimes.com/news/2009/01/ap_missingsoldier_010308/