A 23-year-old woman, Sarah Roque, was fatally shot by a fellow soldier, Wooster Rancy, on October 2024. Her body was found in a dumpster behind the barracks at Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri.
According to an investigation by The Intercept, women in the Army are more likely to be killed by their fellow service members than by enemy combatants. Between 2011 and August 2025, at least 41 women died by homicide in the Army - over half of them at the hands of other service members or veterans.
The incident is part of a larger pattern of violence against women in the military. Research points to the military's hypermasculine culture as a contributing factor to high rates of violence against women. The existing scholarship on this issue is insufficient, according to Erin Siegal McIntyre, a journalism professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
The Army has several programs and policies to protect service members who experience sexual assault or domestic violence, but critics argue that these protections are being rolled back and dismantled under Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. In September 2025, he eliminated the Defense Advisory Committee on Women in the Services, which had existed for nearly 75 years.
The incident has raised questions about the military's handling of domestic incidents involving service members. The Army spokesperson Heather Hagan denied that its protections were insufficient, but critics argue that more needs to be done to address this issue.
This is not an isolated incident. According to The Intercept's investigation, over 70 percent of victims had an intimate relationship with the perpetrator at one point, and the rate of homicides among women soldiers from intimate partner violence is at least three times higher than the national average.