Police: Iraq a factor in US soldier's suicide

An American soldier who had told his family he did not want to return to Iraq apparently killed himself in a Puerto Rican motel days before he was to join his unit and head back to the war zone, police in the US territory said today.

Nokware Rosado Munoz, 28, had been arguing with his pregnant wife about his redeployment before hanging himself on Sunday, said Lieutenant Edilberto Rivera Santiago, director of the police homicide division in the San Juan suburb of Bayamon.

“They were having problems because he had been activated again,” Rivera said.

Rosado was scheduled to rejoin his unit at Fort Bliss, Texas, this week.

The soldier’s mother-in-law, Migdalia Estrada, said that Rosado was receiving psychiatric treatment stemming from a previous Iraq deployment.

“He had said to my daughter that he didn’t want to go back to Iraq,” Estrada said. “I don’t understand how they can order him back if he was having problems.”

An Army official in San Juan, Felix Santiago, said the military was cooperating with Puerto Rican authorities in the investigation. Officials in Fort Bliss had no immediate comment.