Fort Leonard Wood building honors female soldier

Fort Leonard Wood is dedicating a new building in honor of Missouri's first female soldier killed by hostile fire.

The south-central Missouri Army base says a memorial plaque honoring Sergeant Amanda Pinson of St. Louis will be formally unveiled during a ribbon-cutting ceremony July 26th for the new Training Support Center.

Pinson was 21 in March 2006 when a mortar exploded in the central Iraq city of Tikrit, killing her and 22-year-old Specialist Carlos Gonzalez of Middletown, New York. Both were based at Fort Campbell, Kentucky.

Pinson was a signals intelligence analyst. She enlisted out of high school when she was 18, telling a newspaper columnist at the time that she thought the experience would help her grow — and that she was aware of the dangers involved.