BEDFORD, Va. – One family now has some closure after 70 years.
The Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency (DPAA) announced Thursday that Army Pfc. Bobbie Ray Daniels, 17, of Bedford, who was killed during the Korean War, was accounted for on Sept. 21, 2020.
Daniels was a member of Company F, 2nd Battalion, 5th Cavalry Regiment, 1st Cavalry Division.
On Aug. 16, 1950, he was reported missing in action during a battle near Waegwan, South Korea.
His remains could not be immediately recovered and on May 1, 1953, he was officially declared dead, according to the DPAA.
Prior to that, during searches of the area where Daniels was last seen in February 1951 and March 1951, two sets of unidentifiable remains were discovered.
Those remains were later buried as Unknowns at the National Memorial Center of the Pacific in Honolulu.
In 2017, the family of an unresolved soldier associated with the same area where Daniels went missing requested both remains be disinterred for comparison with their soldier.
That request was granted on Aug. 20, 2018, and the remains were then sent to the DPAA Laboratory at Joint Base Pearl Harbor for analysis.
To identify Daniels’ remains, DPAA scientists used dental and anthropological analysis, as well as circumstantial evidence. Additionally, scientists from the Armed Forces Medical Examiner System used mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) analysis.
In 2019, Daniels’ name was read during a ceremony at the National D-Day Memorial in Bedford along with more than 200 Virginians who became POW/MIA since WWII.
Daniels’ funeral is scheduled for May 22.