8 soldiers charged in death of Danny Chen

In the relatives’ account, the soldiers pulled Private Chen out of bed and dragged him across the floor; they forced him to crawl on the ground while they pelted him with rocks and taunted him with ethnic slurs. Finally, the family said, they ordered him to do pull-ups with a mouthful of water — while forbidding him from spitting it out.


It was the culmination of what the family called a campaign of hazing against Private Chen, 19, who was born in Chinatown in Manhattan, the son of Chinese immigrants. Hours later, he was found dead in a guard tower, from what a military statement on Wednesday called “an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound” to the head.


On Wednesday, the American military announced that the Army had charged eight soldiers in Private Chen’s battalion in connection with the death.


OuYang read from a message that family members said Chen had written from Afghanistan. "They (other soldiers) ask me if I'm from China a few times a day. They also called out my name 'Chen' in a goat-like voice sometimes for no reason," the message said in part.


"I'm running out of jokes to respond back to them," Chen wrote, according to OuYang.


His relatives said that Chen told them of being pelted with rocks and forced to hold liquid in his mouth while being hung upside down. But OuYang said there were no signs that Chen was suicidal and that up to a week before his death, he sent upbeat messages from his Facebook account. "He was laughing," she said.


The Pentagon called Chen's death a "tragic incident," and the Associated Press quoted spokesman Capt. John Kirby as rejecting allegations of hazing. "We treat each other with dignity and respect. That's what this uniform requires," Kirby said. "And when we don't, there is a justice system in place to deal with it. And that's what we're seeing here in the case of Pvt. Chen."


Through a translator, Su Zhen Chen described her son as a good and popular student who had told her when he was 18 years old that he wanted to enlist in the Army. Chen said she did not want him to go. But his father, Yan Tao, reasoned that his son was an adult and had to make his own decisions.


In August, three enlisted Marines were criminally charged with mistreating a fellow Marine from California in the hours before he committed suicide in Afghanistan. The three faced accusations including "wrongfully abusing, humiliating and demeaning" Lance Cpl. Harry Lew of Santa Clara. Lew shot himself to death April 3.