The Army's recent announcement that another infant had mysteriously died while living in post housing at Fort Bragg was especially eerie to Pearline Sculley, like a bookend to her own tragic story.
The latest death was a boy, 4-1/2 months old, with no obvious illness, who seemed fine one minute on the morning of Feb. 24 and not breathing the next. Sculley's own son, Jaden Willis, was 2-1/2 months old when he died suddenly on the same date in 2007. She still doesn't why.
The Army says it doesn't know, either, why 12 babies have died in four years, beginning with Jaden. An investigation of more than six months that included reviews of the children's medical records and autopsy reports - and hundreds of environmental tests at the homes where some of the families lived - failed to find a common cause.
Though the military can't say what killed the children, it is confident what didn't:Army housing, though three of the babies, including Jaden, lived at different times in the same townhouse.