Another sad chapter in this tragic story. Rest in peace. –Matt
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Contractor, set afire in Nov. by Afghan, dies
Posted on Sat, Jan. 10, 2009
By Matthew Barakat
McLEAN, Va. – An anthropologist embedded with the U.S. Army in Afghanistan to help soldiers understand local customs has died more than two months after being doused with fuel and set on fire.
The attack on Paula Loyd, 36, prompted an alleged revenge killing by one of Loyd’s colleagues, who now faces the first murder charges filed against a military contractor in Afghanistan or Iraq under a 2000 law that allows such prosecutions. Don Ayala of New Orleans is charged with second-degree murder in U.S. District Court in Alexandria.
Loyd suffered second- and third-degree burns over 60 percent of her body in the Nov. 4 attack west of Kandahar and died Wednesday at Brooke Army Medical Center in San Antonio.
Celia Jones, executive director of the Moonlight Fund, a nonprofit group that assists burn victims and their families and worked closely with the Loyd family during her two-month hospital stay, said that Loyd had been chatting with an Afghan man about fuel prices when he suddenly attacked her. “It was such a senseless act,” Jones said.
