FORT BLISS, Texas – A Minnesota soldier was found guilty Monday of deserting her Army unit on the eve of deployment to the Middle East.
Spc. Melanie McPherson, 28, faces up to a year in prison after a military judge’s ruling, which superseded McPherson’s guilty plea to a lesser charge of going absent without leave. She told the judge she hitchhiked to Minnesota after leaving Fort Bliss the day before her unit was supposed to leave for Kuwait in July.
McPherson was expected to be sentenced Monday afternoon.
McPherson, a graduate of Woodbury High School who is trained as a military photojournalist, said she left because she was afraid she would eventually be deployed to Iraq as a truck driver or military police officer.
She said both are jobs she was not trained for and feared that if she was sent into a war zone as anything other than a photojournalist, she would be a danger to herself and anyone around her.
McPherson also pleaded guilty to a separate charge of missing her deployment.