KILLEEN, Texas.– Chris and Elder sat outside the emergency entrance of the military hospital, smoking a cigarette.
They had known each other since they joined the Army and they loved each other as brothers.
But Chris Channell had a hard time recognizing his best friend for weeks.
"Get in there and tell the doctors exactly what you told me," he recommended that day.
And so Elder Fernandes, a 23-year-old sergeant stationed at Fort Hood, Texas, told the medics.
In his own handwriting, he wrote on the admission documents:
“I am here because I was going to commit suicide.
Talking to someone might help
.
"
It was the last time the two friends smoked a cigarette.
Ahead of them was that sprawling, lonely plain of central Texas, interrupted only by asphalt, military buildings, and training grounds that make up the massive Fort Hood military base.
It was also the last time they saw each other.
Fernandes was found hanged in a nearby Fort Hood area two weeks later.
The autopsy determined that it was a suicide
.
The name of this naturalized immigrant was thus added to the thirty
Fort Hood soldiers who died in 2020
, a year in which the gigantic military base raised protests, criticism and investigations after the disappearance and death of soldier Vanessa Guillén.
The Pentagon admitted that Fort Hood carries a high level of soldier deaths and mismanagement of sexual harassment and abuse.
In the Armed Forces as a whole, in 2020
there were 580 deaths by suicide
, according to Pentagon data.
After Fernandes' death, his inner circle and police investigations revealed how the base
had become a place he wanted to escape from
:
The soldier reported sexual abuse from a direct superior.
But he felt singled out precisely for reporting.
He was admitted to a base hospital with suicidal thoughts.
They released him but no one checked if someone would take him in.
The alarms did not go off for his absence.
The base did not activate its search.
“I am here because I was going to commit suicide.
Talking to someone might help, "the soldier signed in his own handwriting. Cedido / Noticias Telemundo
The two friends, Elder Fernandes and Chris Channell, met at Army admission training.
Fernandes enrolled in the Armed Forces without notifying his family.
He knew that his mother, Ailina Fernandes, was opposed to the idea, it seemed full of risks, but he wanted to build a career similar to that of his father, who stayed in his home country, Cape Verde, occupying high police positions.
His mother, with whom he
emigrated from Cape Verde when he was 11 years old
, now reads and rereads the letters that her son wrote to him since training.
Detect in them illusion, ambition, and a sweet taste for the future.
She begged him not to send her canned food, as some immigrant mothers do, which was forbidden, for example.
After some time serving in Europe, Fernandes returned to the United States but the coronavirus pandemic lengthened his stay at the Fort Hood base.
He was far from his home in Massachusetts, but his mother felt like she was back home.
Ailina Fernandes looks at a photo of her son Elder in a hallway at home. Damia Bonmatí / Noticias Telemundo
“You hope that soldiers are more comfortable in their own country,” explained Ailina Fernandes, “but Elder was more comfortable and happier in Europe.
Feeling much better abroad than in your own country is a shame for the United States ”
.
As the months passed at Fort Hood, the soldier - now a sergeant - gradually distanced himself from his family and friends, but then they did not know why.
He reported sexual abuse at the base
In May 2020, three months before his disappearance, Elder Fernandes
filed a complaint about sexual abuse at the base,
later referred to lawmakers who would investigate his disappearance and death.
The young sergeant claimed in his complaint that a senior military officer intentionally touched his butt during his working hours at some base offices.
According to the documents of the internal investigation,
"he used the palm of his hand to grasp her buttocks."
Fernandes said he
"felt he was doing it to demean him
.
"
There is no written record of whether there were other incidents of alleged sexual or psychological harassment that the soldier did not report out of shame or fear of reprisals.
"There is a kind of revictimization when someone tells their story and is excluded or alienated, they do not believe it or nothing happens to the perpetrator," retired military officer Queta Rodríguez, who entered the base to investigate for the Pentagon after several cases of deceased or abused soldiers came to light in 2020.
For Fernandes, for me, for many men, being sexually abused by another man is something you don't want to talk about. "
CHRIS CHANNELL FRIEND OF THE SOLDIER
The first to know about Elder Fernandes' situation was his friend, and also Sergeant, Chris Channell, the same night of the reported incident.
"For Fernandes, for me, for many men, being sexually abused by another man is something you don't want to talk about, that you don't want to reveal to your family," he explains, "I told him I had to talk to someone or make a complaint official, but I argued about it.
I wanted to let it be.
That "let it be" has been a common attitude at the base, according to the investigations after the murder of Vanessa Guillén.
The Latina soldier had told her mother that she would not report the sexual harassment so as not to damage her military career.
And investigators sent by the Pentagon after his death said that
no senior official took action in the cases of sexual assault or harassment
.
Thus, they warned that there was "a general lack of trust" in the victim care program.
The victim felt singled out
Elder finally filed the complaint, as recorded in the case file:
"He told me: 'I have made a complaint.'
And the crazy thing was that, even if he made that complaint, he stayed in his unit, which should not be done with victim-aggressor situations, ”explains Channell, who also claims to be a victim of sexual harassment in the Armed Forces.
After a few weeks, the base ended up changing the unit soldier.
According to the account of his friends and family, this
made him feel singled out, as “the punished one”, as “the culprit”
, and in both units they began to know why they had transferred him.
That sentiment is part of a larger-scale complaint from activists and organizations of victims of abuse in the Army.
They say that, at Fort Hood, the consequences fell on who reported.
His environment says that he was noticing changes in Elder.
He went from charting an exemplary military career to confronting his leaders at his workplace.
He isolated himself, reduced his text messages to monosyllables, cried sometimes and got angry frequently.
He began to take steps to physically free himself from Fort Hood, where until now he lived in the soldiers' apartments.
He managed a car to make it easier to get off the base and moved in with his friend Chris, who lived in the neighboring town of Killeen.
Even the family suspects that he married for convenience during those months to make it easier for him to be approved to live off-base.
During those weeks, the denounced superior was interviewed by the investigators.
He denied the facts and was subjected to a polygraph test.
The examination concluded that the military leader was not lying, the investigation documents now show.
At least three other soldiers stated that they did not see the incident and one said that Fernandes had worsened his attitude at work.
The defendant also blamed the soldier for confronting him at an area gas station.
A mural remembers the immigrant soldier in McAllen, Texas, with the label in English # JusticiaParaElder.Damià Bonmatí / Noticias Telemundo
Groups of victims of sexual harassment in the Army
criticize the use of the polygraph to detect who is telling the truth or lies in cases of sexual harassment
.
At the end of 2020, Noticias Telemundo Investiga asked Major General John B. Richardson, in charge of the base, if this technique was adequate, but he replied that he is not an expert in the polygraph and that it was a matter of the division of investigation criminal.
Said he didn't want to stay in Fort Hood
While all that was going on, Fernandes' coexistence with his friend didn't work out either.
"He started to distance himself more," recalls Channell.
He ended up leaving the house: he said he was going to move into an apartment in Killeen but he never did.
Police documents reveal that Fernandes rented an apartment but never got the keys.
He left all his things in a moving warehouse, like so many that populate Killeen to serve the soldiers.
He slept in outdoor parking lots near the base, from where he connected to the motels Wi-Fi
.
We entered Fort Hood to see what changed after the death of Vanessa Guillén
Dec. 7, 202003: 59
His family in Boston began to worry about the lack of news.
The mother sensed that something was happening and her brother contacted Chris Channell on August 11, 2020. The friend managed to locate Fernandes and went to visit him: he was in his car in a parking lot between the Super 8 motel and the La Quinta hotel.
Interned for wanting to commit suicide
Channell accompanied the soldier to Darnell Medical Center, a Fort Hood military hospital, where they said goodbye at the door.
In the admission documents, Fernandes wrote that he was there because he was going to commit suicide and that talking to someone might help him.
He spent almost a week in the military hospital, in constant communication with his family in Massachusetts.
His mother, Ailina Fernandes, says that she spoke up to four times a day with her son, without clearly explaining the reason for his admission or letting him travel there.
She said it was a military hospital and they wouldn't let her in.
"They kept him there for six days and
let him go without even calling the family to tell us what his situation was,
" the mother complains.
Her son promised that he would call her again when he left.
The Fort Hood base confirmed to Noticias Telemundo Investiga that, on Monday, August 17, 2020, the soldier left the hospital and a senior military escorted him to the home of his friend Chris Channell.
This was what the patient had requested, and so he made it known to his friend on the way home.
But from that moment on,
neither his family nor his friends nor his superiors at the base ever heard from him again.
They didn't check where I was going
His friend complains that the military man who escorted Elder, despite his delicate mental health,
did not verify that he knocked on the door, nor that someone received him to continue under observation
.
That Monday night, every hour, his friend sent Fernandes a new text message to find out where he was, but he had no response.
On Tuesday, Channell told his chain of command that his friend and partner had never made it to the home, and began an informal search with soldiers who were visiting the area.
That same Tuesday,
the soldier did not attend the follow-up medical appointment he had arranged, nor did he appear at the unit's physical training
.
From Massachusetts the mother left messages on her son's voicemail without getting any response.
It was when he decided to fly to Texas that same Wednesday.
The soldier was walking, apparently aimlessly, in the area near Fort Hood before turning up dead.Caleb Olvera / Noticias Telemundo
They did not activate the search
During the first 48 hours, the base did not activate any searches, nor did it declare Elder Fernandes missing.
“Fort Hood did nothing for my son Elder.
He did not want to prove that my son was missing.
When I went to the Fort Hood police, they told me they couldn't do anything for my son before 30 days, "Ailina Fernandes told Noticias Telemundo Investiga.
Fort Hood did nothing for my son.
He did not want to prove that my son was missing. "
ailina fernandes MOTHER OF THE SOLDIER
At that time, as happened with the disappearance of Vanessa Guillén,
the base did not declare the soldiers who did not show up for work disappeared
, but rather considered them deserters (AWOL for its acronym in English).
In the absence of responses from Fort Hood, the mother went to Killeen City Police to file a missing person report.
Soon, Tim Miller, a volunteer who has led a search team in Texas for decades, was instrumental in finding the remains of Vanessa Guillén.
Looking back on those harrowing days,
Miller accuses the base of inaction over Fernandes' disappearance
.
He says he even had a verbal confrontation with his leaders because they did not activate the search.
Tim Miller has led a team of volunteers in Texas since 1984, when his daughter Laura disappeared and was murdered.
A portrait of her presides over the office.Damià Bonmatí / Noticias Telemundo
“We had the ugliest treatment I could imagine from a commander,” explains Miller,
“they didn't follow up on the case as they should.
There was a very slow alertness and supervision capacity.
I hope this is not the case in all the military bases in the country because, if it is, our country is in tremendous trouble. "
He was alive after his disappearance
It is now known that Elder Fernandes was still alive in those early days.
According to police reports, he turned his cell phone on and off, heard some voice messages, and even a neighbor from the area spoke with him just the day his mother, Ailina Fernandes, landed in Texas.
"I was stretched out here, under these trees," explained Jayson Glazner, a neighbor of Nollanvile, Texas, a small town 11 miles from where the Army left Fernandes after leaving the hospital.
Glazner rides an all-terrain cart around his sprawling property and remembers that
that day he offered water and a pull to that disoriented young man
.
But he turned it down and went in the opposite direction to base, in the sweltering heat of August in Texas.
A neighbor found Fernandes on this land 10 miles from Fort Hood.Damià Bonmatí / Noticias Telemundo
Fernandes was not wearing military clothing and the neighbor had no news of his disappearance from the Fort Hood base.
It was days before he saw Elder Fernandes's photo on local television and his heart skipped a beat.
“My stomach turned.
If I had recognized it earlier, I could have stopped it, ”he says.
My stomach churned.
If I had recognized it earlier, I could have stopped it "
Jayson Glazner, resident of the fort hood area
Glazner was the last person on record to see the soldier alive.
But when he saw his face again on television, they were already reporting that
they found him dead.
Next to a golf course and the train tracks
On August 25, 2020, Temple police, about 20 miles from the base, received a call from a lonely, industrial location in the city, near a golf course and train tracks.
A railroad worker was collecting golf balls on the tracks when
a body was found hanging from a tree
, according to his testimony to authorities.
Next to the body they found a backpack, heavily loaded, as if the deceased carried his life on his back, with some thirty objects: 453 dollars in cash, sunscreen, a Boston sports cap ...
Two days later, the death certificate confirmed that the body belonged to Elder Fernandes, 23, and
the autopsy said it was a suicide
.
The corps arrived with military honors in Boston and his mother received the flags and titles of military merit from her son.
At mile 220 of this railway line, near Temple, Texas, they found the body of Elder Fernandes. Damia Bonmatí / Noticias Telemundo
On August 26, 2020, one day after his death, Fort Hood concluded that sexual abuse was unproven.
"The probable cause does not exist", it reads in the conclusions of the file.
The military leaders assured in any case that they had taken Fernandes' complaint seriously, that they had offered him help, that they had changed his unit.
The Fort Hood press office told Noticias Telemundo Investiga that
no one committed any crime in this case.
Months after the deaths of Vanessa Guillén and Elder Fernandes, the Pentagon fired 14 Fort Hood officers, including two generals, and announced a reform of its program to protect victims of sexual abuse and harassment.
The Army considered that there was no evidence of the sexual abuse reported.Credit / Noticias Telemundo
Fernandes' body is buried in an area reserved for the military in a Brockton, Massachusetts cemetery, where Elder spent part of her youth, shy and lonely, having family meals of African recipes, walks with the dog in the park, and games of soccer in the backyard with his brothers.
After his death, his mother was filling the house with photos, frames, posters and pillows with Elder's face wearing that smile that froze at 23 years old.
But the woman also sought help to find out what happened.
The idea that it was an avoidable death corrodes him.
The soldier's mother and aunt speak with attorney Lenny Kesten at the family home on the outskirts of Boston.Damià Bonmatí / Noticias Telemundo
The family's lawyer says they haven't sued so far, basically because they can't.
"The Army is immune to the demands of the soldiers,
" explains lawyer Lenny Kester, but adds that the Armed Forces did not fulfill their obligations.
"It is surprising what happened," he explains, "they discharged him from the hospital but there was no follow-up.
They should have given him support but, instead, they left him on the edge, outside a friend's house, outside the base, with no one, no support, nothing. "
Ailina Fernandes visits the grave of her son Elder, buried south of Boston. Damia Bonmatí / Noticias Telemundo
While chatting on the front steps of his house, the soldier's mother receives a package with more large photographs of her son.
Then he opens it and looks at them with pride.
Also that day another box arrives, but in this case with the things that were found next to Fernandes's body.
To open it, however, he will wait for a moment of privacy, alone, a moment to reconnect with what his son left him.