SEATTLE — A federal judge has set a July 2016 trial date in a lawsuit filed against the Army by the parents of a Marysville man and his girlfriend killed by a group of renegade soldiers in Georgia in 2012 to protect a plot to assassinate President Barack Obama.
The wrongful-death lawsuit, filed in December in U.S. District Court in Seattle by the parents of Michael Roark, 19, and his girlfriend, 17-year-old Tiffany York, of Georgia, alleges the Army allowed a secret militia called “FEAR” — Forever Enduring, Always Ready — to “form and fester within its ranks” at Fort Stewart, Georgia, where Roark was stationed as a private.
It also claims the Army had plenty of warning that the leader of the group, Pvt. Isaac Aguigui of Cashmere, Washington, was a “dangerous and mentally unstable” soldier — including evidence that he had murdered his wife, an Army sergeant, just five months earlier.
The lawsuit alleges that, despite suspicious circumstances surrounding the death of Sgt. Deirdre Aguigui in July 2011, the Army paid Isaac Aguigui $500,000 in death benefits, which he used to finance his plan, including the purchase of $32,000 in assault-style rifles and handguns.
The group also plotted to buy land in Washington as a compound and discussed poisoning the state’s apple crop and planned to kill the president.
The civil trial is expected to last two weeks.
Aguigui was sentenced to life without parole in March 2014 by a military judge after he was convicted of killing his wife. He was court-martialed only after a second autopsy found evidence she had been strangled.
The Army bungled the first autopsy, according to the lawsuit.
Aguigui pleaded guilty last May to the murders of Roark and York and received two more life terms.
York was shot by another member of the group, former Sgt. Anthony Peden, a heroin-addicted combat veteran of the Afghanistan and Iraq wars who as a Cavalry scout had suffered traumatic brain injuries and post-traumatic stress disorder. He was sentenced to life with the possibility of parole last May, with the judge acknowledging his service record.
Roark had been discharged from the Army after getting in trouble, and Aguigui and other members of the group feared he might talk about its plans.
According to prosecutors, Aguigui, Peden and the others, Pvt. Christopher Salmon and Pvt. 1st Class Michael Burnett, lured Roark and York into the woods near the base and shot them. Peden shot the woman and Salmon shot Roark on his knees, according to evidence at their trials.
Salmon is also serving life without parole.
Burnett pleaded guilty to reduced charges of manslaughter in 2012, when he agreed to testify against the other soldiers.
The lawsuit alleges the Army should have been on notice that Aguigui and Peden were troubled soldiers who talked openly of plans to form a militia and carry out terrorist operations.
Shortly after the suspicious death of his wife, the lawsuit alleges, the Army investigated Aguigui in a plot to kill local drug dealers so Aguigui could take over the trade.
The plaintiffs include Tracy Jahr, Roark’s mother, of Marysville; his father, Brett Roark, of Daytona Beach, Florida; and York’s parents, Timothy York of Kerman, California and Brenda Thomas, of Richmond Hill, Georgia.
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