On May 18, police officers in Clarksville, Tennessee, found U.S. Army Private First Class Katia Dueñas Aguilar dead in her apartment — stabbed almost 70 times.
The homicide is still an open case, and no one has been arrested.
Dueñas Aguilar was 23 when she died. She was from Mesquite, Texas, and she joined the Army in 2018. She was assigned to the 101st Airborne Division and stationed at Fort Campbell, near Tennessee-Kentucky border.
The Pink Berets, an advocacy group for military women, expressed concern on Instagram over the death of another Latina soldier. It urged the Army to be transparent in its investigation.
“No answer is the wrong answer. Someone knows something,” the post said. “We would like to see the military push harder to find answers for their soldier’s killer than they would to find a missing weapon.”
The post mentioned SPC Vanessa Guillen, who was killed on Fort Cavazos (formerly known as Fort Hood) in 2020. Her murder ignited a change in how the military handles sexual assault and murder cases.
The Pink Berets said it hoped the Army learned from mistakes made with Guillen case.
Carmen Dueñas Aguilar, the soldier's mother, and the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC) posted a reward of $55,000 for information that could lead to an arrest and conviction.
During a recent press conference, LULAC representatives also mentioned Guillen's case and compared the two. They said not enough attention was paid to the military's missteps.
Dueñas Aguilar's mother added that she didn’t know her daughter had been planning to re-enlist. She wanted to know who made her daughter do that.
Cecilia Ruiz-Aguilar, Dueñas Aguilar's sister, said base counselors told her sister that she needed to live for herself and not her mother. The family also expressed concern that she didn’t receive proper counseling regarding her drug use.
“We’re not good. We want to believe it’s a nightmare,” her sister said. “That we can wake up and she will still be there.”
Scott Beaubien, public affairs officer with the Clarksville Police Department, said a lot of information about the case has not been released. The investigation is led by Clarksville police, and the Army's Criminal Investigation Division is assisting with the case.
“In an investigation like this … you can’t really set a timeline. You just have to follow the evidence,” Beaubien said. “It is very much at the forefront of the department.”
According to a toxicology report obtained by The Clarksville Leaf-Chronicle, Dueñas Aguilar had a blood alcohol level of 0.161 and traces of Gamma-hydroxybutyric acid (GHB), also known as a “date rape drug.”
During the conference, AnaLuisa Carrillo-Tapia, director of LULAC District 17 Central Texas, said all the drugs aside, the focus is what happened and who did it.
“This is a Latina. This is a young lady who signed on the dotted line to serve our country,” she said. “We want justice.”
