Griselda Martinez describes her brother, Army Spc. Enrique Roman-Martinez, as an introvert who didn’t pick fights and didn’t like drama.
“He was always so cheerful and sweet and loveable, and any time someone felt down, he would be there to cheer them up,” said Martinez, 26.
So it was shocking to the family that on May 23, Roman-Martinez, a 21-year-old Chino resident, was reported missing during a campout with fellow soldiers from Fort Bragg, North Carolina, and six days later, his partial remains washed up on the shore nearby.
Investigators say they consider Roman-Martinez’s death a homicide. No arrests have been announced.
“It hurts so bad because he’s not that guy, he’s not someone who would confront someone. He doesn’t fight with people. He doesn’t even yell at people,” Martinez said Wednesday, July 15.
Chris Grey, chief of public affairs for the Army’s Criminal Investigation Command, said Wednesday that the investigation is continuing and that no other information was available.
Rep. Norma Torres, D-Pomona, in a news release on Tuesday, urged the public to assist in the investigation and added, “The claim of leaving no one behind on the battlefield rings hollow when service members are murdered without justice just miles from their base.”
Torres quoted Roman-Martinez’s mother, Maria, as saying, “No one has the right to take someone’s life, my son’s life, away. That was my youngest, my baby, and I don’t have him anymore, only his memories. I demand justice for him.”
The family’s wait for answers has been painful. They hope a witness will come forward, and the Army has offered a $25,000 reward for information that leads to the conviction of Roman-Martinez’s killer.
“Someone out there knows,” Griselda Martinez said.
In the Army at 17
Roman-Martinez was very shy as a young child and even though he became more social, he still loved staying home and playing video games. He’d open up — if you got to know him — Martinez said. He was the youngest of three children; the oldest, Veronica Martinez, is 28.
Her brother attended Don Lugo High before transferring to Buena Vista High, a continuation school, when his grades suffered. He was having a rough time, Martinez said, because his father was deported when he was about 11 years old and his mother was working two jobs while raising three children.
Roman-Martinez joined the Army in 2016 when he was 17 to learn responsibility and discipline and because he thought the military would help him achieve his goal of attending college. He hoped for a career medically treating people who suffered from mental illnesses, Martinez said.
Roman-Martinez attended airborne school in Fort Benning, Georgia, and was assigned to Fort Bragg in 2017, where he became a human resource specialist and a paratrooper in Headquarters Company, 37th Brigade Engineer Battalion, 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 82nd Airborne Division. His decorations included the Army Good Conduct Medal, National Defense Service Medal, the Global War on Terrorism Service Medal, the Army Service Ribbon and the Army Parachutist Badge, the Army said.
He called his mother before his first jump and asked her to pray for him because he was nervous, Griselda Martinez said.
“He figured it would be good to have that on his record. He really liked it. He said he felt free every time he jumped off the airplane,” she said.
Otherwise, Roman-Martinez didn’t talk much about Army life. He did mention his closest friends in the service, Martinez said, which apparently did not include the group of about seven with whom he went camping. She said the Army told her that they were “guys he hung out with” and that they were being questioned.
Roman-Martinez vanishes
The soldiers were vacationing on South Core Banks, the 21-mile-long middle barrier island of the three that make up Cape Lookout National Seashore just under 200 miles east of Fort Bragg. It’s a popular destination for day-trippers who can ride a ferry from the mainland to visit the Cape Lookout Lighthouse.
The soldiers went to bed early May 23, about 12:03 a.m., according to a 911 call obtained by ABC/11 in Raleigh-Durham. “That is the last time we saw him,” the caller said.
That call was placed at about 7 p.m. the same day. “We woke up. He was not here. And we’ve been looking for him all day. We were trying to find the park ranger, or their offices, or anything,” the caller said, according to another part of the 911 call reported by NBC/7 in Greenville.
Adding to the mystery, Martinez said, her brother left his phone, wallet and glasses behind at the campsite. “He can’t see well without his glasses,” she said. “That’s how I know something awful happened.”
Searches, including paratroopers from Roman-Martinez’s unit, combed the area — sometimes in rain, wind and rough seas — until his remains were found May 29 on Shackleford Banks Island, where the prevailing tides have washed ashore others’ bodies, an 82nd Airborne news release said.
“Over Memorial Day weekend we lost Enrique to a senseless act of violence,” Maj. Gen. Christopher Donahue, the commanding general of the 82nd Airborne, said in a written statement. “We are doing everything we can to support his family and find justice for Enrique. I’ve personally spoken with his family to assure them that we will not stop in our pursuit to bring those responsible to justice.”
Roman-Martinez was identified through dental records.
Griselda Martinez said the Pitt County Medical Examiner’s Office told her that her brother’s injuries were “consistent with dismemberment” and that “There’s not an animal in that sea that could have done that.”
Kelly Haight Connor, a spokeswoman for the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services, said no information on Roman-Martinez’s injuries would be publicly released until the investigation was complete.
Services have not yet been scheduled. Martinez said that according to her family’s Catholic faith, her brother’s soul will not have peace until his killer has been identified.
“We want to be able to give my brother peace,” she said.
Though painful, Martinez said she tells her brother’s story in the hope that someone will come forward with information. She has busied herself by contacting agency after agency, office after office until finding officials who could give her authoritative answers to her questions.
She has to do it, Martinez said, because she is haunted by a long-ago conversation with her brother.
“He asked me one time, ‘Will you always be there to protect me?’ I said yes,” Martinez said. “Now that it’s happened, it breaks my heart. I feel guilty that I couldn’t protect him. The most I can do is find out what happened to him.”
