Honduras Gun Incident Involving California Guardsman Confirmed

The state Military Department reversed itself Friday and confirmed that a California National Guardsman participated in a midnight shooting incident while on sentry duty in a Honduras jungle last month.

Col. Donald J. Foley, a spokesman for the California guard, said the guardsman fired three “warning shots” into the air when someone with a “moving light” in the jungle darkness refused to obey commands to halt. The incident occurred April 24 near heavy earthmoving equipment the guardsmen were assigned to protect.

The firing of a weapon seemed likely to add new fuel to the election-year controversy in the Democratic-dominated Legislature over approval by Republican Gov. George Deukmejian to send about 30 Spanish-speaking guardsmen to Honduras to protect road construction equipment.

The issue was raised publicly in the Senate on Thursday by Sen. Diane Watson (D-Los Angeles) during debate on a Democratic-sponsored resolution that calls on Deukmejian to bring home 15 California guardsmen who volunteered for a “training exercise” in the Central American nation where a road is being built.

Guard Retreats

Watson said she had heard about a “shooting” in Honduras involving the California guard. The measure’s author, Senate Democratic leader Barry Keene of Benicia, responded that he also had heard the rumor but that California guard officials would neither confirm nor deny it.

The Senate resolution narrowly passed and was sent to the Assembly where a similar measure is pending.

Later in the day, Foley told news organizations that “the senator (Watson) is misinformed.”

On Friday, however, the California National Guard retreated. Foley volunteered that the guard “has been misinformed and Sen. Watson was not misinformed. . . . Oops, egg on our face. We’re a little embarrassed.”

He said guard officials at the Military Department’s headquarters in Sacramento had insisted for two days that no such incident occurred. On Friday, guard officers in Honduras were contacted directly and confirmed that three shots had been fired from the M-16 rifle of a California guardsman on sentry duty, Foley said.

He said the incident was not reported sooner to headquarters because it was “considered a trivial incident” by officers in Honduras.

Warning Shots

Foley said the Californian guardsman along with a guardsman from Missouri and a Honduran soldier spotted a “light appearing and reappearing” in the vicinity of the heavy machinery, and that orders were shouted to “halt and identify yourself.”

The warning shots were fired, Foley said, “and the light goes away. Our guy says he sees someone running through brush up a hill on the other side.”

Deukmejian has maintained that the Spanish-speaking Californians are safe and far from hostilities in neighboring El Salvador and Nicaragua. Some Democratic legislators, however, insist that the citizen-soldiers should remain in California and that operations such as road building in volatile Central America should be performed by regular U.S. Army soldiers.

The first 15 California military police guard troops spent two weeks last month in Honduras providing security in what was described as a “training mission” and returned home. The second group is scheduled to return May 18-19.