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Breaking News: Missing Soldier Mom Found

Jeneesa Lewis Stabbed, Beaten

Posted: 6:47 pm MDT July 20, 2008Updated: 6:54 am MDT July 21, 2008

A Fort Bliss soldier and mother who was considered missing and endangered was found late Sunday, injured but alive, in El Paso.

Tammy Skelton, of Rogersville, Tenn., said she talked to her sister, Pfc. Jeneesa Lewis, early Monday by phone, and the soldier said she was beaten and stabbed twice.

Skelton said her sister "sounded tired, scared and weak."

Family members said Lewis, 29, moved to El Paso from Tennessee and joined the Army in an effort to leave her husband of two years, Clinton W. Lewis, and to make a new life.

Skelton described Clinton Lewis as controlling and abusive

"She was only allowed to go to work and come back. If she looked at another male, she'd get beat up," Skelton said.

Jeneesa Lewis' grandmother, Delores Pigeon, said her granddaughter joined the Army in September to get away from her husband, but he followed Jeneesa to Texas.

"It's not like she didn't try. But she had to get rid of excess baggage, and that's really hard to do because he wouldn't let her," Pigeon said.

Authorities were alerted to Jenessa's disappearance when she didn't report to work at Fort Bliss on Friday. Police said they found blood and signs of a struggle inside her west El Paso apartment.

Clinton Lewis is jailed in El Paso on an aggravated kidnapping charge.

Jail records show he's held on $75,000 bond. The documents did not show if he has an attorney.

Pigeon said her granddaughter called to say her husband abducted her from her El Paso apartment last week, drove her to Nevada and then returned to El Paso to turn himself in.

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