Missing Marine found safe at rest area

RICHLAND, Texas — A U.S. Marine believed to have left Arizona for California’s Camp Pendleton never arrived, but he was found days later at a Texas rest area, unharmed.

Lance Cpl. Job Wallace was taken into custody Saturday night by the Naval Criminal Investigative Service and other law enforcement officers at a rest area in Navarro County, according to an NCIS statement cited by The San Diego Union-Tribune.

The 20-year-old had last been seen leaving a friend’s house in Surprise, Ariz., last Monday night, his mother, Stacy Wallace, said. He was due back at Camp Pendleton after a three-day leave that took him home to the suburbs west of Phoenix and a camping trip.

About 55 miles south of Dallas, Navarro County is more than 1,100 miles east of Surprise and in the opposite direction from Camp Pendleton in Southern California.

The statement from Kurt Thomas, the special agent in charge of the NCIS Marine Corps West field office, did not include details about how Wallace was found or what he was doing.

Stacy Wallace had said her son loved the Marines and was excited to get back to Camp Pendleton, having been recently promoted.

“He got into several colleges and missed scholarship opportunities just so that he could be a Marine, because he felt it was his duty to serve his country,” Wallace said.

Thomas’ Saturday night statement thanked law enforcement partners in Texas, Arizona and on the federal level “for their aid in bringing this to a safe resolution.”