Columbus, GA: Victims in murder-suicide worked in same engineer battalion

By ALAN RIQUELMY - ariquelmy@ledger-enquirer.com

The victims of a murder-suicide in Columbus this weekend worked in the same engineer battalion on Fort Benning and were married for more than a year before the fatal shooting.
Police have released few details about the Saturday slaying of 21-year-old Ruby Grant and the suicide of her 27-year-old husband, Freddie Dewayne Grant. Reports state officers were checking on the welfare of the couple at their Huckleberry Hill Apartments home off St. Marys Road around 7 p.m. when they discovered both Grants in their bedroom with gunshot wounds to the head.
One neighbor said officers at the scene were also looking for a little girl who’d been spotted outside the apartments.
The girl’s relationship to the Grants is unknown.
Spc. Ruby Grant, formerly Ruby Ruiz, was from Selma, Calif. She’d been on active duty since March 2009 and arrived at Fort Benning in July 2009. She served as a bridge crew member with the 366th Engineer Corps, 11th Engineer Battalion, said Elsie Jackson, public information officer with Fort Benning.
Sgt. Freddie Grant, of Steele, Mo., served in the same battalion. He joined the Army in February 2008 and came to Fort Benning that month, having served for the previous two years in the National Guard.
Neither had ever deployed, Jackson said.
Freddie Grant had a 5-year-old daughter from a previous marriage. His former wife filed for divorce in February 2010, and Freddie Grant married Ruby Grant in September 2010, records state.