Lithuania’s moving farewell to the four US soldiers who died in Pabradė

A crowd has come to pay tribute to the US Embassy in Vilnius

Lithuania's moving farewell to the four US soldiers who died in Pabradė

@DefAviation Esp 4·03·2025 · 21:26 0

The death of four US Army soldiers during a military exercise in Pabradė has shocked the people of Lithuania.

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The soldiers disappeared on March 25 in their M88A2 Hercules recovery vehicle. Search efforts finally recovered the bodies of three of them on March 31 and the fourth on April 1, in a swampy area of the training ground in that Lithuanian town. The Lithuanian Army made great efforts to find the deceased, with the support of the armies of Poland, Estonia, and the United States.

The names of the deceased soldiers are as follows (from left to right, in these photos):

Private Dante D. Taitano, 21, of Dededo, Guam.
Sergeant Edvin F. Franco, 25, of Glendale, California.
Sergeant Jose Duenez Jr., 25, of Joliet, Illinois.
Private Troy S. Knutson-Collins, 28, of Battle Creek, Michigan.

Following the sad news of the discovery of the deceased soldiers, a crowd of Lithuanians gathered at the U.S. Embassy in Vilnius to pay tribute to the deceased. Children and adults, Lithuanian civilians and military personnel, and armed forces veterans participated in the tribute.

This Thursday, April 3, Lithuania held an official farewell ceremony for the four deceased soldiers, with the presence of the President of the Republic of Lithuania, Gitanas Nausėda, the Minister of National Defense, Dovikė Šakalienė, the Commander-in-Chief of the Lithuanian Armed Forces, General Raimundas Vaikšnoras, the Metropolitan Archbishop of Vilnius Gintaras Grušas, as well as high-ranking state officials, ambassadors and members of the Armed Forces of the United States and allied countries.