Soldier charged in slayings of two GIs in Iraq

HOUSTON We're hearing for the first time from his lawyer who just returned from Iraq.

Guy Womack, who has had much success in the military court system, stepped off a plane Thursday morning and talked exclusively to Eyewitness News. He says the soldier is accused of killing and wounding were his roommates and friends. He went to Iraq with little information and came back

It was inside a building in Fallujah, 8,000 miles away where two army soldiers were killed and one was seriously wounded. It is not inside enemy territory and the man accused is not the enemy; he's Specialist Neftaly Platero.

"Not someone you would think would do this," Platero's Defense Attorney Guy Womack said.

Womack just returned from both visiting his client and visiting the crime scene.

"They took us into the sealed room and took us on a tour of it," he said.

It was a six-day trip to the Middle East. His meeting with Platero lasted a couple of hours; surprisingly, none of which was spent asking his client whether he did it.

"I don't need to know what he thinks happened," Womack said. "I need to know what the government thinks happened and what the evidence suggests, and right now most of the scenarios you could come up with the evidence would exclude him as the shooter."

This is what we know: it was inside the quarters he shared with the three other soldiers. Witnesses heard multiple gunshots, and when it was all over, there two were deceased on either side of the room. In the middle was the third, who was wounded; and just outside was Specialist Platero. He was uninjured and unarmed.

" They concluded just because he was there that perhaps he was involved," Womack said.

The army said the shooting followed an argument, but Womack says witnesses heard nothing.

"He's never been in trouble in his life," Womack said.

Platero, a graduate of Kingwood High School and former Marine, has now been charged with premeditated murder. He sits in an Army jail far from his family with a lot to think about.

"The fact that he could receive a death sentence for this," Womack said. "So certainly the weight of the world is on his shoulders."

Army investigators told Womack 18 rounds had been fired. They found multiple weapons, many with missing rounds, but then again it's an Army base. Those weapons have been shipped to an Army lab in Georgia for testing.

An Article 32 hearing similar to a grand jury is set for late next month.

And we're not forgetting the victims. They are Private First Class Gebrah Noonan of Connecticut and Specialist John Carrillo of California.