“We were told that he was dragged from his bed across the floor, and other soldiers threw rocks at his back,” Elizabeth OuYang, president of the New York chapter of the Organization of Chinese Americans, tells The Daily Beast. And, OuYang says, while forced to do chin-ups with liquid in his mouth, “Danny couldn’t cough up the liquid.”

OuYoung says the anti-Asian bullying and taunting started during basic training in Fort Benning, Georgia, when fellow soldiers used a mocking accent while calling him Jackie Chen, a reference to the action star Jackie Chan. A diary that Chen kept, as well as information released by the Army, are the basis for her claims.

And now OuYoung, friends and family are struggling to find more answers: Was this even a suicide, or a cold-blooded murder?