Safah Yunis Salem, 13, who said she played dead to avoid being shot, was the only survivor of the Marine attack on the second house. Her sister Aisha, 3, was shot in the leg and died; her brother Zainab, 5, was killed by a shot to the head. She said she lost six other members of her family.
"He fired and killed everybody," Safah said. "The American fired and killed everybody."
One Marine and two Iraqi soldiers told investigators that the men who had been in the taxi were standing in a line outside it, some with their hands up, when Wuterich began to fire on them.
Wuterich said the men got out of the car, and he shot them because he considered them a threat. Dela Cruz contradicted that account.
"As I crossed the median I saw one of the Iraqi civilians, who was standing in the center of the line, drop to the ground," Dela Cruz told investigators. "Immediately afterwards another Iraqi standing by him raised his hands to his head. I then heard other small arms fire and looked to my left and saw Sgt. Wuterich kneeling on one knee and shooting his M16 in the direction of the Iraqi civilians."
Dela Cruz told investigators that he pumped bullets into the bodies of the Iraqi men after they were on the ground and later urinated on one of them.
Iman Walid Abdul-Hamid, 9, told investigators that a grenade exploded near her grandfather's bed. Her mother and 4-year-old brother were killed as she huddled, injured, with another brother, Abdul Rahman, 6, who survived. "All rooms," Abdul told investigators. "They were shooting in all rooms."
“We can’t say those guys didn’t commit a crime,” said Michael F. Noone Jr., a retired Air Force lawyer and law professor at Catholic University of America. “We can only say that after an investigation, there was not sufficient evidence to prosecute.”
