AUSTIN, Texas — Latrece Johnson woke up gasping for air at exactly 2:43 a.m. March 14 in her home in Vidalia, Ga. She said it felt like a dream, but she knew instantly that something had happened to her son, Spc. Freddy Delacruz.

“I felt him take his last breath. I saw him call to me. I felt him being shot,” Johnson said, recalling the pain she felt at the exact time her son was shot six times in an apartment in Killeen, Texas. “I literally gargled on the same blood.”

Delacruz, 23, was shot and killed along with his pregnant girlfriend Asia Cline, 20, and Army veteran Shaquan Allred, 23. He was the second soldier murdered this year at Fort Hood but not the last.

Between March and June, the deaths of five soldiers have become suspected homicides, more than the past four years combined. At least two veterans who had separated from the Army at Fort Hood within the previous six months were slain. Additionally, two soldiers are alleged to have committed murder. In the previous four years, only two soldiers’ deaths were considered homicides, according to data from the Fort Hood Public Affairs Office. Both died in 2017.

In addition to the increase in homicides at Fort Hood, the number of violent crimes committed by soldiers at the post this year — and since 2015 — is alarming. The two issues raise questions: Why this post? Why now?

“The numbers are high here. They are the highest in most cases for sexual assault, harassment, murders, for our entire formation in the U.S. Army,” Army Secretary Ryan McCarthy said when he visited Fort Hood in early August.

The Army Public Affairs office this week released the numbers McCarthy cited that day, which compare Fort Hood’s violent and nonviolent felony data from 2015 through 2019 to that of two installations of comparable size: Fort Bragg, N.C., and Joint Base Lewis-McChord, Wash.

Fort Hood averaged 129 violent felonies committed by soldiers per year. Fort Bragg had an average of 90, and Lewis-McChord had 109. Violent felonies include crimes such as homicide, violent sex crimes, kidnapping, robbery and aggravated assault.

Fort Hood officials did not respond to questions concerning crime at the post.

KILLEEN, Texas — A soldier who is missing from Fort Hood in Texas had transferred units after reporting sexual abuse, an Army official said in a statement.

Sgt. Elder Fernandes, 23, was reported missing on Wednesday. Killeen police said he hasn't been seen since Monday when his staff sergeant dropped him off at home.

Fort Hood public affairs officer Lt. Col. Chris Brautigam said in a statement that there is an “open investigation of abusive sexual contact” involving Fernandes.

“The unit sexual assault response coordinator has been working closely with Sgt. Fernandes, ensuring he was aware of all his reporting, care, and victim advocacy options," Brautigam said in the statement. Brautigam said Fernandes had been transferred to another unit "to ensure he received the proper care and ensure there were no opportunities for reprisals.”

The man’s family and the U.S. Army are asking for the public’s help in finding the missing soldier.

Imagine that you’re a young recruit. You have enlisted in the U.S. Army, and the Army has granted your wish, going so far as to guarantee you the military occupational specialty of your choice — 11X, infantryman. You’re going to follow in the footsteps of a long line of soldiers going back more than 200 years to the Continental Army, a force initially made up almost entirely of riflemen, with a smattering of artillery. Upon induction, you are selected to go to Fort Benning. Having completed basic training, you move across post to attend the Army’s infantry school, emerging as a newly minted infantryman. Now imagine that your name is Pvt. Tyler Washington, and you’re African American. You have spent all of your initial training in the U.S. Army at a base named after a southern secessionist, a member of Georgia’s delegation to the Virginia Secession Convention, and a man who never served in the U.S. Army, only against it. A man who fought for the right to keep people as property — people who looked like you — and who himself owned 89 other human beings. A man who served a cause that was antithetical to what the U.S. Army stood for, even then, and even more so now.

The Department of Defense is under pressure from Congress to expose and correct its white supremacy problem. It’s clear that there is a problem — one not confined to the Army — and a recent troop survey indicates a worrying upward trend in signs of white supremacy in the ranks. But it’s also clear that the department has taken a softball approach to the challenge — as illustrated by the fact that it doesn’t treat membership in white supremacist organizations as a sole rationale for discharge. Worse yet, the services, especially the U.S. Army, have a long habit of venerating those who fought for the Confederacy, both ex-Army oath-breakers like Col. Robert E. Lee and those who never served in the U.S. Army, like Henry L. Benning, whose major relationship to the U.S. Army was that they fought against it. Might one wonder why the services have a poor record combating white supremacy? Maybe it’s because white supremacy is baked in.