Name: Lori Ann Piestewa,
Branch/Rank: Army/PFC
Unit: 507th Maintenance Company, Fort Bliss, TX
Date of Birth/Age: 14 December 1980 (age 23 at capture)
Home City of Record: Tuba City, AZ
Date of Loss: March 23, 2003
Country of Loss: Iraq
Original Status: Missing in Action
Current Status: Died in Captivity from Wounds received in incident
Aircraft/Vehicle/Ground: Ground

Other Personnel in Incident:

Killed in action:
Spc. Jamaal R. Addison, 22, of Roswell, GA; Pfc. Howard Johnson II, 21, of Mobile, Ala.

Missing in action (later declared KIA):
Master Sgt. Robert J. Dowdy, 38, of Cleveland, Ohio; Pvt. Ruben Estrella-Soto, 18, of El Paso; Spc. James M. Kiehl, 22, of Des Moines, Iowa; Chief Warrant Officer Johnny Villareal Mata, 35, of El Paso; Pfc. Lori Ann Piestewa, 23, of Tuba City [see below] Ariz.; Pvt. Brandon Ulysses Sloan, 19, of Bedford, Ohio; and Sgt. Donald Ralph Walters, 33, of Salem, Ore. [see below]

Prisoners of war:
Spc. Edgar Adan Hernandez, 21, of Mission, Texas; Spc. Joseph Neal Hudson, 23, of Alamogordo, N.M.; Spc. Shoshana Nyree Johnson, 30, of El Paso; Pfc. Patrick Wayne Miller, 23, of Walter, Kan.; and Sgt. James Joseph Riley, 31, of Pennsauken, N.J.

Four more members of the unit were wounded, but managed to hold off or evade enemy forces until a Marine unit arrived to help evacuate them.

Source: Compiled by P.O.W. NETWORK from one or more of the following: raw data from U.S. Government agency sources, correspondence with POW/MIA families, published sources, interviews. June 2004.

Synopsis: A group of about 20 members of the 507th was ambushed near An Nasiriyah, Iraq on the fourth day of battle by civilian-clothed Iraqi forces. The soldiers were supplying the 3rd Infantry Division in its drive to Baghdad in central Iraq when they took a wrong turn. Broadcast pictures showed the convoy with a vehicle that appeared to have its tires shot out, another was overturned. Six vehicles were destroyed according to media reports.

The 507th, which deployed with the 11th Air Defense Artillery Brigade, was not considered a combat unit, Defense Department officials said. Made up mostly of mechanics, the 507th keeps the diesel tanker trucks rolling, fixes generators and keeps the mechanical parts in good shape.

Piestewa was a supply clerk, and during the attack, the vehicle driven by Lori Ann crashed into the back of a jackknifed tractor-trailer truck in front of her, resulting in massive injuries she would later succumb to. Her passenger was Jessica Lynch.

The Washington Post reported that the unconscious Pfc. Lynch and her still-alive friend Pfc. Lori Piestewa, a single mother of two small children, arrived at a nearby medical/Iraqi headquarters facility three hours after the ambush.

Piestewa's original status was updated only after she was shown alive and unconscious in an Iraqi TV shoot which was not aired before the fall of Baghdad. The tape was shown on 30 Dec 2003 on the NBC Nightly News. The U.S. Army's report on the ambush of the 507th Maintenance Company also notes that Piestewa was captured and died in captivity.

Piestewa became the first female American soldier killed in the Iraq war. She was one of a handful of Native American women serving in the U.S. armed forces.

Piestewa Peak