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U.S. Marshals handling missing soldier case

JACKSON, Miss. — Six months after a Kentucky National Guard soldier and two guns disappeared from a training base in Mississippi, military officials say they developed no leads and have turned the case over to the U.S. Marshals Service.

Pfc. Ryan K. Longnecker, 19, was training at Camp Shelby in south Mississippi for a mission in Iraq when he disappeared on Aug. 6, 2007, just two weeks before his unit deployed. Longnecker’s military-issued 9mm pistol and M4 rifle were also missing.

Col. Phil Miller, a spokesman for the Kentucky National Guard, said Friday that the search for Longnecker was being handled by investigators at Camp Shelby, a Mississippi Guard base that has been federally mobilized since 2004 to train troops for deployment to Iraq and Afghanistan.

“We don’t have any new information,” Miller said.

Col. Doril Sanders, a spokesman for Camp Shelby, said the investigation “has been turned over the U.S. Marshal Service.”

“We have not developed any leads or anything,” Sanders said.

A message left Friday with the U.S. Marshals in Jackson was not immediately returned.

Longnecker’s family had moved around the country frequently so tracking him down has been difficult, officials have said. Miller said he did not think Longnecker’s immediate family still lived in Kentucky. The Associated Press could not locate a telephone listing for the soldier.

Longnecker was supposed to deploy with the Kentucky National Guard’s Battery B, 2nd Battalion, 138th Field Artillery unit when he vanished from the base, Sanders said.

Camp Shelby is a massive 136,000-acre base south of Hattiesburg. Nearly 50,000 National Guard troops from across the country have trained there since 2004.

A few weapons and other equipment, including night vision goggles, have come up missing from the base before. However, it’s rare for a soldier to disappear at the same time weapons are reported missing, officials have said.

Longnecker’s unit, made up of about 160 Kentucky Guard soldiers, deployed to Iraq in late August 2007. Two of the soldiers in the unit have died, Miller said.