The State from Columbia, South Carolina • 7

WWW.THESTATE.COM THE STATE, COLUMBIA, SOUTH CAROLINA TUESDAY, MAY 31, 2005 A5 FROM PAGE ONE passed qualification tests with their weapons the new soldiers carry rifles loaded with blanks. When they leave the barracks, the soldiers load a blank into the firing chamber as if they were going to patrol off base in Iraq. When they return to the barracks, the recruits take the rifle's magazines out, clear the blank from the rifle's firing chamber, then point the muzzle into a sand-filled barrel and pull the trigger, ensuring the weapon is not loaded. It is the same procedure the soldiers would follow when returning to a base in Iraq, Brown said. SEEING IMPROVEMENTS The new policy seems to be improving soldiers' proficiency on the firing range, as well as safety, commanders said.

Only about 60 percent of recruits initially qualified as proficient in firing their weapons the first time that Lt. Col. Michael Ryan's training battalion went through the pilot program. That was much lower that the usual 70 percent to 75 percent. Ryan, who commands the 1st Battalion, 34th Infantry Regiment, attributed the lower firsttime qualification rate to new requirements that the recruits wear body armor and shoot from a kneeling position.

Once the soldiers became more comfortable with the gear, scores went up, he said. "What we consider most important is that, at the end of the OFFICE CHAIRS 100s IN STOCK 69600 COF THE LARGEST OFFICE AND FURNITURE OLDEST WAREHOUSE SHOWROOM IN SC COF 1835 GERVAIS AT GREGG WWW.COFOFFICEFURNITURE.COM day, 100 percent of the soldiers had qualified," Ryan said. Sgt. 1st Class Edward Anderson, one of Delta Company's drill sergeants, also said he has seen improvement in safety. "The last (training) cycle, we didn't have any (accidental) discharges," Anderson said.

"We usually have two or three, but two or three is still not acceptable." Reach Crumbo at (803) 771-8503 or COSTLY ACCIDENTS Small-arms accidents have killed 24 soldiers since 2002. The Army reported 113 incidents that caused deaths, injuries or property damage during that period. Incidents Fatalities 2002 14 1 2003 51 11 2004 40 9 2005 (1) 8 3 Total 113 24 (1) FROM OCT. 1, 2004, TO PRESENT SOURCE: ARMY SAFETY CENTER GERRY STATE Soldiers line up with their weapons during lunch recently inside the mess hall at Fort Jackson. WEAPONS FROM PAGE A1 stolen.

Lt. Col. Hull said the new program was launched after veterans of the Afghanistan and Iraq wars returned to Fort Jackson to help train soldiers. In a combat zone, soldiers live with their weapons all the time, said Hull, commander of the 2nd Battalion, 28th Infantry Regiment. "What better way to help prepare them for their units than to start doing that here at basic training." About half of the drill sergeants and training officers at Fort Jackson are Iraq or Afghanistan veterans, officials said.

Those veterans include Delta Company commander Capt. Tony Brown, who was with the 14th Engineer Battalion near Tikrit, Iraq, from April 2003 to April 2004. Learning the correct way to handle a weapon checking the safety and keeping your finger off the trigger unless you're ready to fire should become so ingrained during training that soldiers will do it the right way despite fatigue or complacency, Brown said. "Second nature will make you do it the right way." Fort Jackson tested a pilot program in August and launched GIRL FROM PAGE A1 case unit. "This thing is still solvable.

We need bits of information that's going to push it over the top," Investigator Eric Barnes said. Lt. Stan Smith said investigators are learning new information that did not come out before. Time has "loosened up some of the fear of people" who are now willing to talk, he said. Sometimes, it just "takes a fresh perspective" from different investigators to get that break, Smith said.

McCoy, who adopted Silene when she was 3, said it has been difficult to move forward with the killer or killers still out there. She agrees with investigators that Silene knew the person who beat her and set her body on fire. It could have been one of many people Silene thought was a friend, her mother said. "She knew a lot of people in a lot of different places," said McCoy in her first interview with The State newspaper. She declined interview requests in the days after her daughter's death.

Staying home was not Silene's thing. She enjoyed being on the go and had no problems catching a ride. McCoy said she tried to ground her, but it did not work. Silene would sneak out the door or through a window, she said. "Silene was her own person.

I think I did everything I could. What was right for me was not right for The teen had been attending SAFETY FIRST The rules for weapons safety that the military preaches to recruits 1. TREAT EVERY WEAPON as if it were loaded. 2. NEVER POINT your weapon at anything you are not willing to destroy.

3. KEEP YOUR FINGER off of the trigger until you are ready to fire. 4. BE SURE OF YOUR TARGET and what is beyond it. the new policy in February, Hull said.

The training program also has been adopted at the Army's four other basic training sites Fort Knox, Fort Sill, Fort Leonard Wood, and Fort Benning, Ga. Saying the troops carry their weapons is only a slight exaggeration. At night, the guns are locked in a rack at the front of a barracks' sleeping bays. Otherwise, the recruits carry their guns everywhere except to church. To add even more realism to the training, by the fifth week of training after recruits have Alston-Wilkes Youth Services alternative school after being expelled from Dreher High School for cursing, her mother said.

"She didn't like people getting in her face." Silene's need for attention might have stemmed from the death of McCoy's husband nine years before from a heart attack. Silene, who was 5 then, "never, ever got over that," her mother said. "Whatever she was looking for, she could not find." McCoy has an 11-year-old son, Eugene, who was extremely close to his sister. She also is adopting a 4-year-old girl. Eugene, who is in counseling, did not want to talk about Silene.

He has moved into her old bedroom, which had been painted a soothing lavender and was redone in blue for him. He also picked out his sister's urn and urged his mother to keep her ashes in the china cabinet. After Silene's 18th birthday, her remains will be buried at the foot of her father's grave. McCoy was not comfortable at first with having her daughter's ashes in their home until Eugene spoke up. "He said, 'Mama, you can talk to her," McCoy said.

And she does. "I tell her what I wish her life would have been. She was a happy person on the outside with so much turmoil on the inside. I wish everything had turned out better." Reach Leach at (803) 771-8549 or Pope backs restrictions on fertility treatments ops were "committed to illumiBy VICTOR L. SIMPSON The Associated Press nating the choices of Catholics and all citizens" in the upcoming VATICAN CITY Pope Benedict referendum.

He emphasized the XVI on Monday endorsed efforts importance of defending the famby Italy's Roman Catholic bish- ily and human life. ops to restrict assisted fertility The current law forbids sperm treatments, stepping into an emo- and egg donation, limits the numtionally charged Italian referen- ber of embryos created with indum battle. vitro techniques to three and bans The German-born pope con- all embryo research. tended that next month's The referendum would abroplebiscite on scrapping parts of a gate the law's provisions on emlaw that regulates assisted fertil- bryo research, the three-embryo ity treatments posed threats to life limit, the ban on egg or sperm doand the family. nation from outside the couple The pope spoke to the Italian and the attribution of rights to the bishops' conference, which has unborn.

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