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Widow Raising New Questions About Electrocutions in Iraq
Husband Died While Showering in Baghdad
Carol Han – November 25, 2009
Adam's widow Janine Hermanson
WASHINGTON — It appears as if 18 deaths, a congressional probe and new military marching orders were not enough to end a rash of electrocutions in Iraq.
Now, a Pennsylvania woman is demanding accountability after her husband, an Air Force veteran and military contractor, died in a Baghdad shower Sept. 1. Adam Hermanson’s death comes less than two years after a Pittsburgh soldier, Staff Sgt. Ryan Maseth, was electrocuted while taking a shower in Iraq.
Janine Hermanson, of Muncy, Pa., says that for the past two months, she has been getting the runaround from military investigators and Triple Canopy, the Defense Department contractor that hired her husband.
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“It’s so frustrating,” Janine Hermanson said. “All I want to know is what happened to him and why it happened to him but no one can tell me. No one seems to care to tell me.”
Janine Hermanson’s search for answers started not long after she received a phone call from the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad. Hermanson says the woman on the phone told her there was no foul play involved.
It’s the same point repeated in a letter she received from the U.S Embassy in Iraq dated Sept. 1. In it, Jennifer Tierney, chief of American Citizen Services, writes: “There is no indication of any foul play or unusual circumstances.”
Read the entire letter HERE.
“I didn’t understand,” Janine Hermanson said. “He didn’t have any medical problems. No health problems.”
The mystery was solved a few days later when Adam Hermanson’s body was shipped to Dover Air Force Base. Janine says there were burn marks on his body, and the military medical examiner who performed the autopsy told her that the cause of death was likely low-voltage electrocution.
Janine immediately contacted the U.S. Criminal Investigation Command (CID), the special Army task force looking into Adam’s death.
In an email to Janine dated Nov. 23, Special Agent Jeff Lange from the Army CID in Carlisle, Pa., wrote that the investigation has shown that Triple Canopy — Adam’s employer — “appears to be solely responsible for the operations and maintenance” of the camp where Adam lived. Lange also said that an inspection performed after Adam’s death shows the electricity in his building was not grounded or bonded. “The investigation is seeking to identify whether any criminality was involved in Adam’s death,” Lange wrote.
Janine says that several major questions remain unanswered. First, why wasn’t she initially told about the electrocution? Who was the contractor who put in the building’s electricity and plumbing? Who is ultimately responsible for Adam’s death?
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How is it that an autopsy can be done in such a short period of time and the cause of death is certain beyond a doubt, but to find what happened which are the circumstances which caused the electrocution and what company bears responsibility (epecially when there is a paper trail required by the DoD, goes way beyond reasonning and logic. I believe the guilty company knows they are at fault – and is doing the “KBR Shuffle”.