North Texas family wants answers after soldier found dead in home
NORTH TEXAS — Private First Class Katia Duenas-Aguilar of Mesquite enlisted in the Army in 2018. She had a four-year-old son and was stationed at Fort Campbell in Kentucky but had recently told her family she was planning on leaving the Army.
"She would already tell me that she's not happy over there and I wanted her to come back so we could make more memories," said Cecilia Ruiz-Aguilar, Duenas-Aguilar's sister.
But on May 18 Clarksville Police found her dead inside her apartment in Clarksville, Tennessee. Police ruled her death a homicide.
"We want to know what happened, who did it and we want to make sure that person or people are brought to justice," her family said.
Katia Duenas-Aguilar's family held a press conference in Dallas Saturday with the support of the League of United Latin American Citizens or LULAC. They're pleading for the public's help and doubling a reward to $55,000 for any information leading to the arrest and conviction of her killer.
"We want to believe that it's a nightmare that we can wake up and she will still be there," said Ruiz-Aguilar.
Her family says she had plans to leave the Army earlier this month and come home to her family in Texas but they say after she spoke with an army counselor she decided to stay.
Now her mother is asking why she changed her mind and says the Army should have provided better mental health assistance for soldiers like her daughter. The family says they're not satisfied with the answers they're getting from the Army.
They hope the $55,000 reward will motivate anyone who knows what happened to Katia to come forward.
The Clarksville Police Department and the Fort Campbell Criminal Investigation Division are continuing to investigate Katia Duenas-Aguilar's death. Local police are asking anyone with any information to contact local detectives in Tennessee at at (931) 648-0656.
