Fort Carson – The son of a Grand Junction woman who founded a support group for military families was sentenced Tuesday to six months’ confinement, a bad-conduct discharge and loss of rank for going absent without leave for seven months.
Pvt. David Howerton, 22, of Grand Junction pleaded guilty Tuesday to going AWOL last July. He was arrested March 2 in Grand Junction after being pulled over for speeding by the Colorado State Patrol and was returned to Fort Carson.
On two previous occasions – in February 2005 and again in April of that year – Howerton went AWOL for about a week at a time. He received administrative punishment in those cases.
Howerton told a military judge Tuesday that he went to Grand Junction to to take care of his family. His mother-in-law was stricken with cancer, his wife has kidney illness and his mother, Phyllis Derby, had been burned in a 2004 propane-tank explosion, he said.
Derby founded Homefront Heroes, a nonprofit group that supports military families while their spouses are serving in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Howerton and Derby declined to comment after Tuesday’s court-martial.
“I’m sorry. I know what I did was wrong, but I did it anyway,” Howerton told the court.
While he was AWOL, he lived in Grand Junction and took a job with his stepfather’s roofing company and tried to aid his relatives, he said.
Prosecutor Allen Zent said Howerton left Fort Carson on the eve of his unit’s deployment to the National Training Center in Fort Irwin, Calif., and did not return before his unit left for Iraq in November.
Staff writer Erin Emery can be reached at 970-522-1360 or eemery@denverpost.com.
