NEWS

Mother tries to change military protocol after son's death at Fort Hood

Kara Berg
kara.berg@indystar.com
Dakota Stump

When Patrice Wise's son was found dead, she didn’t know how to move on.

The Arlington, Indiana, woman remembers the sleepless nights she and her fiancé spent searching for her son, Dakota Stump, who was a soldier on  at Fort Hood in Texas when he disappeared on Oct. 10, 2016. Even after his body was found in a wooded area, around 100 yards from a road at the base, the days and nights dragged on.

“I’ve tried so many things to keep myself busy and not constantly be reminded of what happened,” Wise said. “It helps, but I don’t think a mother ever gets over losing a child.

“I feel like every day that goes by, it almost gets worse."

Stump's body was discovered next to his flipped-over vehicle by soldiers conducting land-navigation training. Investigators believe the vehicle left the road, entered the wooded area and rolled over multiple times. The terrain hid the vehicle from the road.

Indiana soldier goes missing at Fort Hood

Missing Indiana soldier found dead at Fort Hood

The pain from Stump's death led Wise to take action. She is working on creating Dakota's Law, to change how law enforcement and military officials handle situations where veterans and active duty members go missing.

Wise wants the military to open lines of communication to families, get rid of restrictions for times to file a missing persons report, make video surveillance available to investigators immediately, track bank account activity with no warrant or paperwork, dispatch search and rescue units quickly, investigate before deciding a soldier is absent without leave (AWOL) and create a "Warrior Alert," similar to an Amber Alert.

But most of all, she wants military officials and police to make every effort to find a missing person as soon as possible.

Right now, when a soldier goes missing, the army conducts an inquiry to see where they may be, notifies the provost marshal within 24 hours, reports the soldier absent within 48 hours and notifies the next of kin if the soldier is still missing after 10 days.

But Wise thinks that's too long.

“Right now, there’s no set-in-stone procedure for when a soldier is AWOL or doesn’t show up,” Wise said. “If there’s a set-in-stone procedure, then soldiers are going to get found.”

Wise wants to make sure other parents don’t have to go through the same thing she did during the month Stump was missing. She believes if police found Stump earlier, he would still be alive.

To a lot of people, AWOL means that a solider didn't show up their post because they were goofing around, left to visit their family, or they didn't want to be in the military anymore, Wise said. But she wants to make people aware that going AWOL can mean anything. The solider can be injured or dead, or they could have deserted the army.

"Any soldier not at work, to me, is a missing soldier, and (officials) don’t look at it like that," Wise said.

Wise is working with Maggie Haswell, president of Warriors Aftermath and Recovery, to write the legislation. Haswell advocates for missing and struggling soldiers.

She said she's seen situations like Stump's too many times. At Fort Bliss, the families of Jake Obad-Mathis and Melvin Jones say the Army refused to look for the two men for two weeks after they went missing, according to the Washington Post.

"It never gets easier, we lose them all the time," Haswell said. "Every case is different, but (the military) doesn't treat it different, and that’s not right."

Dakota's Law has all the petition support it needs, so now the next step is to get legislators interested. Haswell said she hopes for it to come up before Congress in 2018.  But if she had it her way, she'd get it on lawmakers' desks immediately.

Follow IndyStar reporter Kara Berg on Twitter: @karaberg95.