Navy sailor who vanished from Virginia barracks found dead, another sailor held in her death
Resendiz, 21, was last seen the morning of May 29 at her barracks at the Naval Station Norfolk in Virginia. Virginia State Police issued a critically missing person alert for her last week.
A body discovered by the Naval Criminal Investigative Service (NCIS) on Monday in a wooded area in Norfolk was confirmed to be Resendiz by the local medical examiner on Tuesday.
A Navy sailor, who was not identified, has charges pending under the Uniform Code of Military Justice, the NCIS said.
"NCIS remains committed to uncovering the facts surrounding the tragic death of Seaman Resendiz to ensure accountability and justice," the department said. No further details were released and the investigation is ongoing.
The Resendiz family said her disappearance has 'left a void in their hearts' and they 'refuse to let her suffering be in vain,' a spokesperson for the family told NBC affiliate WAVY of Norfolk.
'The family is calling on the assistance of the United States government, Senator Mark Warner, Senator Tim Kaine, the Hampton Roads congressional delegation, home congressman Vicente Gonzalez, and President Donald J. Trump to address the systemic issues that allowed her to vanish without justice since May 29, 2025,' the statement said.
Resendiz's mother, Emeralda Castle, was not notified that her daughter vanished through official channels, the spokesperson said.
"Her daughter's colleagues, friends, and even authorities knew she was missing, but the response was minimal, and after her friends filed a missing person's report when her commander would not, they showed little compassion or understanding," the statement said.
The family is calling for Congress to investigate Resendiz's death and for reform within the Navy's notification protocol.
The NCIS statement said it investigated the case as soon as the agency learned of her disappearance.
This article was originally published on NBCNews.com
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Atlantic
13 hours ago
- Atlantic
The Administration Wants Military Women to Know Their Place
This is an edition of The Atlantic Daily, a newsletter that guides you through the biggest stories of the day, helps you discover new ideas, and recommends the best in culture. Sign up for it here. President Donald Trump and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth seem to be on a mission to erase women from the top ranks of the U.S. armed forces. Last week, they took another step along this path by removing the first female head of the United States Naval Academy, in Annapolis, Maryland. The Naval Academy was founded in 1845, but didn't admit its first class of women until 1976. The head of the school is known as the superintendent, and Annapolis would not get its first female admiral in that position until 2024. Now the first woman to serve as the 'supe' has been reassigned and replaced by a man, and for the first time in the academy's history, the role went to a Marine. Last week, the Navy removed Vice Admiral Yvette Davids from her post and replaced her with Lieutenant General Michael Borgschulte. (Maybe Hegseth thinks Marines are more lethal, to use his favorite Pentagon worship word.) Davids has been sent to the Pentagon, where she will be a deputy chief of naval operations, a senior—but relatively invisible—position. No reason was given for reassigning Davids. Superintendents typically serve for three to five years, but Davids was pulled from the job after 18 months. (A short tenure can be a sign of some sort of problem; for what it's worth, the secretary of the Navy, John Phelan—who has never served in the Navy and has no background in national-defense issues—offered rote praise when announcing her de facto firing as the supe.) Trump and Hegseth have been on a firing spree throughout the military, especially when it comes to removing women from senior positions. This past winter, Hegseth fired Admiral Lisa Franchetti, the first female chief of naval operations; Admiral Linda Fagan, the first female Coast Guard commandant; and Lieutenant General Jennifer Short, who was serving as the senior military assistant to the secretary of defense, all within weeks of one another. I taught for many years at the U.S. Naval War College, where I worked under its first female president, Vice Admiral Shoshana Chatfield. In 2023, she became the U.S. military representative to the NATO Military Committee—and then she was fired in April, apparently in part because of a presentation she gave on Women's Equality Day 10 years ago. At this point, women have been cleared out of all of the military's top jobs. They are not likely to be replaced by other women: Of the three dozen four-star officers on active duty in the U.S. armed forces, none is female, and none of the administration's pending appointments for senior jobs even at the three-star level is a woman. Some observers might see a pattern here. Discerning this pattern does not exactly require Columbo-level sleuthing. Hegseth's antipathy toward women in the armed forces was well documented back in 2024 by none other than Hegseth himself. In his book The War on Warriors, Hegseth decried what he believed was 'social engineering' by the American left: 'While the American people had always rejected the radical-feminist so-called 'Equal Rights Amendment,' Team Obama could fast-track their social engineering through the military's top-down chain of command.' (This is probably why Hegseth also fired the chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General C. Q. Brown, who is a Black man; Brown was let go for ostensibly being too interested in promoting diversity in the armed forces.) Not that the secretary hates women, you should understand. Some of his best friends … well, as he put it in his book last year: 'It's not that individual women can't be courageous, ambitious, and honorable. I know many phenomenal female soldiers. The problem is that the Left needs every woman to be as successful as every man, so they've redefined success in a counterproductive way.' I'm sure that the more than 225,000 American women who serve their country in uniform are relieved to know that they, too, can be courageous, and all that other great stuff. But Hegseth seems to be implying that many women in today's military might have had their fitness reports massaged 'in a counterproductive way' to meet some sort of 'woke' quota. And that, you see, is why the U.S. military's most-senior female officers had to be removed: They were clearly part of some affirmative-action scheme. Thank you for your service, ladies, but let's remember that the Pentagon's E-Ring is for the men. Oddly, Hegseth has no problem with 'social engineering' as long as it's engineering something closer to 1955 than 2025. Indeed, he writes, the military 'has always been about social engineering—forging young men (mostly) with skills, discipline, pride, and a brotherhood.' One might think that the goal is also to instill respect for one's comrades, regardless of gender, and to defend the country and honor the Constitution, but Hegseth is more worried about what he fears is the distracting influence of women in the military. 'Men and women are different,' he writes, 'with men being more aggressive.' (I read this in Cliff Clavin's voice: 'Yes, Diane … hold on to your hat, too, because the very letters DNA are an acronym for the words Dames are Not Aggressive.') Hegseth goes on: 'Men act differently toward women than they do other men. Men like women and are distracted by women. They also want to impress, and protect, women.' In other words, after forging these neo-Spartans with some of the finest training from the most powerful military the world has ever known, Americans still must worry that these carbon-steel warriors, ready to do battle with any number of global menaces, might have their 'lethality' sabotaged by the fluttering eyelashes and shapely gams of their sisters in arms. I was teaching senior officers, male and female, from all branches of the armed forces when Hegseth was still in high school. His view of women in the U.S. military would be beneath serious comment were he not, through the malpractice of the Republican majority in the U.S. Senate, the sitting secretary of defense. Instead of defending the nation—or keeping track of the security of his own communications —he is trying to make the American military inhospitable to half of the nation's population. As Nora Bensahel, a scholar of civil-military relations at Johns Hopkins University, told me, the firing of Davids and other women 'is deliberately sending a chilling message to the women who are already serving in uniform, and to girls who may be thinking about doing so, that they are not welcome—even though the military would not be able to meet its recruiting numbers without those very same women.' Today is my late mother's birthday. She enlisted in the Air Force and served during the Korean War. She came from a poor family, and had to leave the military when her father was dying. But she was deeply proud of her service in America's armed forces; I remember watching her march in uniform in hometown parades. She would be heartbroken—and furious—to know that more than a half century after her service, the message to the women of the United States from the current commander in chief and his secretary of defense amounts to a sexist warning: Feel free to join the military and serve your country—but know your place. What Trump's feud with Jerome Powell is really about Trump's social-media habit is getting weirder. The hype man of Trump's mass deportations Today's News House Speaker Mike Johnson blocked a potential floor vote on the release of additional files in the Jeffrey Epstein case until at least September. The Trump administration released more than 240,000 pages of long-sealed FBI files on Martin Luther King Jr. last night, prompting warnings from his family about the potential misuse of surveillance records to distort his legacy. President Donald Trump met with Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. at the White House and agreed to a trade deal that imposes a 19 percent tariff on goods from the Philippines. Evening Read Chasing le Carré in Corfu By Honor Jones Black dress, pink coat, thick beige stockings. This is the third time I've seen her. She walks down the middle of the street outside my window, her head bent forward under its helmet of grandmother hair. She carries her handbag like a briefcase with a bomb in it. She has the look of someone whose friends are all dead. I saw her first outside Saint Spyridon Church, lighting a candle. And then again in Spianada Square, among the scootering children. I lean out the window to watch her disappear around the corner. Maybe there's nothing suspicious about it. Corfu is a small city, on a small island in Greece. From my hotel room I can see the green edge of the cricket pitch where, in John le Carré's A Perfect Spy, the Czech agent, Axel, chased Magnus Pym in slow, limping circles. More From The Atlantic Culture Break Watch. Stephanie Bai asked The Atlantic 's writers and editors to name the rare movies that are actually better than the books they're based on, and their picks might surprise you. Play our daily crossword. P.S. I hope that readers of the Daily won't mind a personal reminiscence. My mother used to tell me, when I was a boy in the 1960s, that if any other kid used the old insult 'Your mother wears Army boots,' I should always correct them: ' Air Force boots.' Here's a picture of my mother, barely an adult, in her uniform. She joined alongside her sister, and both of them went to basic training in Texas—at that time, the farthest from home my mother had ever been. She later was assigned to do office work at an Air Force base in Massachusetts. Like other poor kids from rough backgrounds, she found order and a home, however briefly, in the military, and was proud of her service 'til the end of her life. — Tom When you buy a book using a link in this newsletter, we receive a commission. Thank you for supporting The Atlantic.
Newsweek
21 hours ago
- Newsweek
Boat Crashes Into the USS Midway, Drunk Driving Suspected
Based on facts, either observed and verified firsthand by the reporter, or reported and verified from knowledgeable sources. Newsweek AI is in beta. Translations may contain inaccuracies—please refer to the original content. A man suspected of drunk driving a boat into the USS Midway has been arrested for "boating under the influence," port officials said. According to the Port of San Diego Police Department, Frank D'Anna, 40, was driving a 65-foot-long motor vessel when it collided with the USS Midway Museum. The crash occurred at approximately 11:54 a.m. on July 18 and was caught on surveillance video. Newsweek has contacted the Port of San Diego and the USS Midway for comment. Guests on board the USS Midway 41 after the Fleet Week San Diego Military Advisory Council event at USS Midway Museum, San Diego, November 8, 2023. Guests on board the USS Midway 41 after the Fleet Week San Diego Military Advisory Council event at USS Midway Museum, San Diego, November 8, 2023. Lance Cpl. Hannah Hollerud/Defense Visual Information Distribution Services Why It Matters The USS Midway is one of San Diego's most recognizable landmarks and a major tourist destination attracting millions of visitors annually. No injuries were reported following the crash, but the USS Midway did sustain some damage, which will cost the Navy an estimated $100,000 in repainting and repairs, according to ABC10. What To Know A press release sent out by the Port of San Diego Public Safety said D'Anna's vessel, known as the Offshore Lifestyle, collided "head-on" with the USS Midway's port-side hull. Meaning, the left side body of the ship. The port said that the vessel was located near the Coronado Ferry Landing in San Diego after it fled the scene following the crash. There were seven individuals onboard when it was located. D'Anna has been booked into county jail for "655(B) Harbor and Navigation Code Boating Under the Influence (BUI), 656.1 Harbors and Navigation Code Hit and Run, and 655(C) Harbors and Navigation Code Operating Vessel with BAC Over .08," per the Port of San Diego Public Safety. The USS Midway is an aircraft carrier that joined the Navy's fleet in September 1945, missing World War II by one week, per the USS Midway site. It is named after the Second World War's Battle of Midway in 1942 between U.S. and Japanese naval forces in the Pacific. It was decommissioned in 1992, making it the 20th century's longest-serving aircraft carrier. It was turned into a museum in 2004. It now hosts over 700 events a year, and serves as an educational site for visitors. What People Are Saying Jagjit Bhambra, a Navy veteran speaking with ABC10, said: "I think we need to examine who was the captain of the little boat, why was he so close, how he did not notice such a massive ship in front of him." Mary Bhambra, Jagjit Bhambra's wife, told ABC10: "It's a famous ship. Maybe a fence around it or something like that, a barrier so the ship can be guarded and a lookout maybe for approaching hazards." What Happens Next If convicted of Boating Under the Influence, D'Anna could face a maximum of six months in prison and up to $1,000 in fines.
Bloomberg
a day ago
- Bloomberg
Next-Gen US Missile Submarine Sees A $1.7 Billion Cost Hike
The Navy raised the estimated price tag for the first of its next-generation nuclear-missile submarines by $1.7 billion, another black eye for a program that's the centerpiece of the service's modernization plans. The USS District of Columbia is now expected to cost at least $16.1 billion, 12% more than forecast when Congress first authorized construction funds in 2021, the Naval Sea Systems Command said in a statement.
