Soldier accused in Afghan shooting spree identified as Staff Sgt. Robert Bales

Pentagon officials on Friday identified the soldier who allegedly killed 16 Afghan villagers as Staff Sgt. Robert Bales, a trained Army sniper who had served three tours in Iraq and suffered war wounds.

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The U.S. soldier accused of slaughtering 16 Afghan civilians last weekend had been reluctant to leave on his fourth deployment, his lawyer said Thursday.

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U.S. military officials say a 38-year-old Army staff sergeant walked off his base in a remote southern village in Afghanistan on Sunday and fatally shot 16 civilians.

Bales, a 38-year-old married father of two who enlisted in the months after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, was flown Friday to a military prison at Fort Leavenworth, Kan., to await possible criminal charges, according to a U.S. Army statement.

Bales is accused of leaving his base in the Panjwai district of Kandahar province; shooting 16 people, including nine children; and attempting to burn their bodies before returning to the base and turning himself in. He could face the death penalty, military officials have said.

The incident has sparked significant backlash in Afghanistan, straining already difficult relations with the United States over conduct of the war there.

The suspect’s name had been a closely kept secret since he allegedly surrendered to authorities after the shootings on Sunday morning. Officials confirmed his name after news organizations began reporting it Friday evening.

Bales’s attorney, John Henry Browne, has said that Bales did not want to deploy to Afghanistan in December, had experienced post-traumatic stress disorder stemming from his deployments and had suffered a head injury during a deployment in Iraq. Bales also had seen one of his fellow soldiers lose his leg in an explosion hours before he allegedly went on a rampage, Browne told reporters.

Army Capt. Chris Alexander, 28, who was Bales’s platoon leader during a deployment in Iraq, said in an interview Friday night that he “saved many a life” by never letting his guard down during patrols.

“Bales is still, hands down, one of the best soldiers I ever worked with,” Alexander said. “There has to be very severe [post-traumatic stress disorder] involved in this. I just don’t want him seen as some psychopath, because he is not.”

Bales, a member of the 3rd (Stryker) Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division, lived with his wife and young children in Lake Tapps, Wash., about a 20-minute drive east of Joint Base Lewis-McChord, near Tacoma. He attended high school in a Cleveland suburb but spent the past several years in Washington or on military deployments overseas.

His family was moved onto the base in recent days for their protection, officials have said.

The neighborhood where Bales lived includes many military families, according to neighbors. The family lived in a two-story beige house with a cedar-shake roof and a small front porch.

In 2007, Bales was part of a long, bloody battle in southern Iraq in which 250 enemy fighters were killed and 81 were wounded while members of Bales’s unit suffered no casualties, according to an Army account that described the battle as “apocalyptic.”

“I’ve never been more proud to be a part of this unit than that day,” Bales was quoted as saying. “We discriminated between the bad guys and the noncombatants and then afterward we ended up helping the people that three or four hours before were trying to kill us. I think that’s the real difference between being an American as opposed to being a bad guy, someone who puts his family in harm’s way like that.”