The new designer "bath salts" drug may have played a role in the murders and suicide of a Fort Lewis soldier and his family.

The Thurston County Coroner said on Thursday he ordered tests investigating whether the drug was a factor in the deaths of David Stewart, his wife and their 5-year-old son.

Two weeks ago, Stewart shot and killed his wife and then turned a gun himself during a police pursuit on Interstate 5 near Tumwater.

Their son was found dead inside their Spanaway home. The Medical Examiner said he had been suffocated.

SEE ENTIRE STORY FROM KIRO HERE

This from The News Tribune: A soldier who has just returned from a tour overseas fired a gun during an argument with his wife and has locked himself inside his home with his 2-year-old old child while refusing to speak to authorities, Pierce County sheriff's spokesman Ed Troyer said Sunday night.

The SWAT team was called to the home at 130^th Street and Meridian Avenue just outside Puyallup about 8:30 p.m.

The wife safely escaped the home.

"He's inside his residence armed, refusing to talk to us or come out," Troyer said.

The soldier was later arrested on suspicion of assault after a tip led the SWAT team to a home in the 7600 block of 35th Street West in University Place, Troyer said.

From the Associated Press:

An Army investigation has found that a Joint Base Lewis-McChord soldier who was killed when he opened fire on police in Utah last year was deeply affected by his deployment to Afghanistan.

Spc. Brandon Barrett deserted his unit, suffered an apparent mental breakdown and died in a shootout with Salt Lake City police on Aug. 27. A police officer was wounded.

See the rest of the story here.

This from KING-5 TV: JOINT BASE LEWIS-MCCHORD, Wash. -- Did the U.S. military break federal laws by planting an undercover spy among Western Washington anti-war groups? Did local law enforcement accept the volunteer undercover efforts of somebody who just happened to be a civilian employee working in Force Protection at Joint Base Lewis McChord?

Those are two big questions that you may hear asked more often and more loudly in the future as public information requests turn up documents about what that undercover operative reported.
 
Timothy Smith, Chairman of the Tacoma chapter of the Bill of Rights Defense Committee, has obtained documentation from the Tacoma Police Department about the activities of John Towery, the undercover plant who was working under the supervision of a Pierce County Sheriff's detective. Those documents show Towery spent several years infiltrating a variety of local anti-war and anarchist groups, focusing mostly on efforts to prevent U.S. military equipment and convoys from moving through ports in Washington, often Olympia and Aberdeen.

Smith says the fact that he has received the detailed information about the undercover operation shows that personal information about protestors, information about individual relationships and the relationships between various anti-war and anti-government groups has been kept and shared by law enforcement agencies.  

To read more, click here. 

This from The News Tribune: The Army announced today that it will prosecute the fifth and final member of a group of Stryker soldiers who allegedly murdered Afghan civilians during patrols last year despite a review that cited weaknesses in the case against the soldier.

The announcement is a setback to Spc. Michael Wagnon, 30, whose family had hoped that the Army would dismiss charges against him after an investigating officer reviewed the case in November and reported that there was little evidence against him.

That report went to Lt. Gen. Curtis Scaparrotti, the senior general at Joint Base Lewis-McChord, who determined the Army has evidence to proceed with a court-martial against Wagnon.

Wagnon will face a court-martial on charges that he murdered an Afghan civilian during a February patrol, shot at unarmed Afghans in March and participated in conspiracies to harm Afghans. He could be sentenced to life in prison if he's convicted.

The Army dismissed two charges from Wagnon's case. One alleged that he kept a piece of skull from an Afghan corpse; the other accused him of trying to obstruct the Army's investigation into his platoon's misconduct by destroying images of Afghan casualties on his computer.

His attorney debunked both of those charges at an Article 32 hearing in November. Wagnon's platoon mates said the skull fragment he kept came from a camel, not a person.

For more on the story, click here.

This from The News Tribune: A Madigan Army Medical Center cardiologist pleaded guilty Wednesday to illegally accepting funds from a medical-equipment manufacturer that wanted to do business with the hospital on Joint Base Lewis-McChord, the U.S. Attorney's Office in Seattle reported.

Maj. Jason Layne Davis, 38, faces up to a year in federal prison and a $100,000 fine when sentenced in April.

Davis accepted about $4,800 in cash, meals and gratuities from Guidant Sales Corp, a sudsidiary of Boston Scientific, between January 2006 and February 2009, according to the U.S. Attorney's Office.

He worked as the chief of Madigan's cardiology department during part of that time and almost exclusively used Boston Scientific's pacemakers and implantable defibrillators in his practice, according to prosecutors.

Last fall, Guidant Sales paid $600,000 to the U.S. government to settle claims it provided illegal payments to Davis to influence him to use the company's devices and recommend that others do the same.

"Military doctors must owe their allegiance to the soldiers and families they treat - not to drug companies or makers of medical devices," U.S. Attorney Jenny A. Durkan said. "That is why we have a bright line rule: doctors employed by the government cannot accept payments or gratuities from an outside source, especially one that is seeking government business."

This from The News Tribune: Spc. Emmitt Quintal, 22, was given a bad-conduct discharge at a court-martial Wednesday at Joint Base Lewis-McChord.

He also must do hard labor for 90 days and take a demotion to private for frequently using drugs during his combat deployment, joining an assault on a comrade and keeping digital photos of Afghan casualties.

He pleaded guilty to those three offenses, as well as a conspiracy charge related to the assault.

"I have put discredit not only on myself and my family, but also on the uniform I wear every day," Quintal said in the courtroom.

It could have been worse for the soldier from Weston, Ore. He negotiated a pre-trial agreement that capped his punishment and required him to testify at hearings for his codefendants in an Army war crimes investigation.

To read the complete story, click here.

JOINT BASE LEWIS-MCCHORD, Wash. -The Special Court-Martial case of U.S. vs. Cpl. Emmitt R. Quintal began at 9 a.m. this morning. Quintal is one of seven 5th Stryker Brigade Soldiers facing charges of serious misconduct while deployed in Afghanistan and is the second to face a Court-Martial.   

Cpl. Quintal's case was referred to a Special Court-Martial after the General Court-Martial Convening Authority reviewed the charges and evidence against Cpl. Quintal, and the recommendation of the Staff Judge Advocate. 

Charges against Cpl. Quintal include:

• One specification of conspiracy to commit assault and battery, UCMJ Article 81
• One specification of unlawfully striking another Soldier, Article 128
• One specification of wrongfully using a schedule I controlled substance, UCMJ Article 112a
• One specification of wrongfully endeavoring to impede an investigation, UCMJ Article 134
• One specification of violating a general order, UCMJ Article 92

If convicted of all charges (and specifications), the maximum punishment Cpl. Quintal faces under Special Court-Martial sentencing is a Bad Conduct Discharge, confinement for up to twelve months, reduction in pay grade to E-1 (enlisted members only) and forfeiture of 2/3 base pay per month for a period of twelve months and/or an equivalent fine.

Joint Base Lewis-McChord officials emphasize that the charges are merely an accusation and that the accused is presumed innocent until proven guilty.

This from The Olympian: OLYMPIA - A 25-year-old sergeant at Joint Base Lewis-McChord was arrested at his in-laws' Olympia home near Black Lake early New Year's Day after witnesses said he entered a neighbor's house uninvited and brandished a handgun, court papers state.

Sgt. Joseph Lee Winkelman, who returned to Olympia in August after a one-year deployment to Iraq with a Stryker brigade, was arrested on suspicion of first-degree burglary. He was in the process of being released from the Thurston County Jail on Monday on his personal recognizance, meaning he did not have to post bail. 

When Thurston County sheriff's deputies made contact with the soldier, he was holding a pistol to his own head. The soldier set the gun down after the deputies ordered him to do so at gunpoint, Thurston County sheriff's Lt. Greg Elwin said.

For more on the story, click here.

This from Stars and Stripes: Plagued by one scandal after another, from violent mental breakdowns to steroid abuse and allegations of killing for sport, Joint Base Lewis-McChord in Washington state this year developed a reputation as the most troubled base in the military.

As the year wound down, the Army was conducting a top-to-bottom review of the 5th Stryker Brigade amid reports of misconduct from a wide swath of its soldiers and a failure of its leaders to curtail the issues.

To read the entire report, click here.