Saipan Tribune

Friday, May 24, 2013

Wednesday, September 26, 2012

Kin await soldier's body

The family of the late U.S. Army Specialist Joselyn Tara Mafnas Sablan said yesterday they're hoping to know by today the date of the body's arrival on Saipan, even as another family is hoping that U.S. Army Specialist Robert Santos Deleon Guerrero will recover from his ordeal.

“Hopefully by Wednesday we'd hear from the Army about the body's arrival. The nightly rosary continues at Santa Soledad in Kagman,” Sablan's aunt, Frances Mafnas, told Saipan Tribune yesterday.

Sablan served in Iraq in 2010 and was supposed to turn 24 on Oct. 13. She passed away last week in Fort Hood, Texas where she was stationed. Her family said the Army has yet to complete its investigation on the cause of her death.

Sablan, the eldest child of Joseph and Rosa Sablan of Kagman, was a graduate of Kagman High School and described by her aunt as a “family-oriented” person.

Sablan's death brings to 18 the number of CNMI sons and daughters serving in the U.S. military that lost their lives since the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks and since the U.S. war on terror in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Meanwhile, Juan “Pan” Guerrero and Herman “Pan” Guerrero separately said yesterday that their nephew-Robert Deleon Guerrero-remains on life support in Tennessee and the whole family is praying for his recovery.

Juan “Pan” Guerrero said the family is waiting for the arrival in Tennessee of the patient's brother, who is also serving in the military and is currently stationed in Afghanistan.

The Army specialist's parents, Florencio Deleon Guerrero and Lucy Santos Deleon Guerrero, arrived yesterday in Tennessee to be with their son.

“My nephew is still in life support. We ask that you include him in your prayers,” Herman Guerrero, a Board of Education member, said yesterday.

Messages of encouragement and prayers for Deleon Guerrero and his family abound in social media.

“We are keeping you and your whole family in our prayers,” one of them said on Facebook.