Nevadan ‘presumed killed’ in Afghan helicopter crash

Daniel Cooney

Friday, July 1, 2005 | 11:14 a.m.

One of the 16 U.S. servicemen killed in Tuesday's crash of a military helicopter in Afghanistan was a Southern Nevadan, according to a Las Vegas Municipal Court memo.

The memo announces that Shane Patton, son of City Marshal James "J.J." Patton, "was presumed killed" in the crash of the MH-47 Chinook.

An official at the Defense Department this morning said that no names of the dead had been released to the public.

The court memo from Chief Municipal Judge Toy Gregory and two court administrators said Shane Patton was a Navy SEAL, as his father had been. Shane Patton had been "on an important military mission in the service of our country," the memo said.

Patton graduated from Boulder City High School in 2000, Clark County School District spokesman Dave Sheehan said, noting he had no further details about Patton.

Attempts to reach an official at Boulder City High who knew Patton were not successful. School is out for the summer and the summer school program administrators are not the same as the regular administrators, a person answering the phone at the school said today.

Efforts to reach a member of the Patton family also were not successful.

At a Defense Department news conference Thursday, Lt. Gen. James T. Conway, 1st Marine Expeditionary Unit commander, said, "all 16 bodies" had been recovered. ... "Positive identification and family notification are under way, and expected to be completed soon.

Conway, director of operations for the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said it appears an unguided rocket-propelled grenade hit the chopper. He called it "a pretty lucky shot against a helicopter."

He said it appeared the troops on board died during the crash and not during fighting on the ground afterward.

The dead comprised seven soldiers from the 3rd Battalion, 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment (Airborne), Hunter Army Airfield, Ga., one from the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment (Airborne), Fort Campbell, Ky., and eight Navy SEALs assigned to units in Norfolk, Va., and San Diego, the U.S. military said in a statement.

It was not immediately known to what unit Patton was attached. Meanwhile, a report out of Kabul, Afghanistan, said a small team of U.S. soldiers was missing today in the same mountains in eastern Afghanistan where the helicopter was shot down.

The helicopter that crashed Tuesday had gone into the mountains to extract the soldiers who are now missing. The team on the ground has been unaccounted for since the chopper was downed, U.S. military spokesman Lt. Col. Jerry O'Hara said.

In central Afghanistan, a provincial governor said 25 people have died in three days of fighting, including nine tribal elders kidnapped and killed by Taliban rebels.

That was yet another troubling sign for a nation that has seen three years of progress toward peace collapse in recent months.

A purported Taliban spokesman, Mullah Latif Hakimi, meanwhile, claimed the rebels had captured a U.S. soldier in the area, near the town of Asadabad, close to the Pakistani border.

"One high-ranking American has been captured in fighting in the same area as the helicopter went down," he told the Associated Press. "I won't give you any more details now."

Reacting to the claim, O'Hara said, "We have no proof or evidence indicating anything other than the soldiers are missing."

Hakimi, who also claimed that the insurgents shot down the helicopter, often calls news organizations to take responsibility for attacks, often with information that proves exaggerated or untrue. His exact tie to the Taliban leadership is not clear.

O'Hara said U.S. forces were using "every available asset" to search for the missing troops. "Until we find our guys, they are still listed as unaccounted for and everything we got in that area is oriented on finding the missing men," he said.

The loss of the 16 troops on the chopper was the deadliest single blow to American forces who ousted the Taliban in 2001 for harboring al-Qaida and are now fighting an escalating insurgency.

Rescuers -- struggling against stormy weather, insurgents and the rugged terrain -- reached the crash site Thursday, about 36 hours after the chopper went down in high mountains near the town of Asadabad.

The rescue team was still there today, recovering parts of the chopper, U.S. military spokeswoman Sgt. Marina Evans said.

In central Uruzgan province, provincial Gov. Jan Mohammed Khan reported a chain of violence that began when insurgents attacked a police checkpoint Wednesday, and a subsequent hour-long gunbattle left seven rebels dead.

On Thursday, the militants assaulted a nearby village, kidnapping nine tribal elders and a 10-year-old boy, he said.

All nine were later killed and the boy was sent to the authorities with a message: If the police hand over the bodies of the seven slain rebels, the insurgents will release the bodies of the nine, Khan told the Associated Press.

The police did not respond to the offer.

"We have started operations and we are going to hunt them down," the governor said.

Today rebels attacked another Uruzgan police post, and five insurgents and four officers were killed, Khan said.

Only eight months ago, Afghan and U.S. officials were hailing a relatively peaceful presidential election as a sign that the Taliban rebellion was finished.

But remnants of the former regime have stepped up attacks, and there are disturbing signs that foreign fighters -- including some linked to al-Qaida -- might be making a new push to sow an Iraq-style insurgency.

Afghan officials say the fighters have used the porous border with Pakistan to enter the country, and have called on the Pakistani government do more to stop them.

The loss of the helicopter follows three months of unprecedented fighting that has killed about 465 suspected insurgents, 43 Afghan police and soldiers, 125 civilians, and 45 U.S. troops, including the 16 killed in Tuesday's crash.

The crash was the second of a Chinook helicopter in Afghanistan this year. On April 6, 15 U.S. service members and three American civilians were killed when their chopper went down in a sandstorm while returning to the main U.S. base at Bagram.