B.C. trucker held for 30-year-old desertion charge
NEWPORT, Wash. – A trucker from Castlegar, B.C. who deserted the U.S. Army almost 30 years ago was jailed during a routine stop at the border on March 22.
Richard Allen Shields, a 47-year-old Vietnam veteran, has been wanted since 1972, when he abandoned the army in Fairbanks, Alaska after a one-year tour of duty in Vietnam.
He was handcuffed and taken to Pend Oreille County Jail in Newport, about 100 kilometres south of the Canadian border.
“I had six months left to go and there was a lot of drugs coming in on base and we were in a situation where our lives were in danger,” Shields said in a media interview from jail. He says his attempt to clean up the drug problem was not appreciated by some of the other soldiers on the base.
He had been shipping lumber into the northeastern Washington town of Metaline Falls.
Shields hadn’t applied to the special discharge review program that became an option when U.S. President Jimmy Carter signed a pardon for Vietnam draft dodgers and deserters in 1977. n
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