Navy sailor pleads guilty to strangling fellow service member as victim’s mother demands answers on missed warnings

Navy sailor Jeremiah Copeland stood before a general court-martial Monday and admitted he killed 21-year-old Culinary Specialist 3rd Class Angelina Resendiz by strangling her inside his barracks room on May 29, 2025. The guilty plea, first reported by Fox News Digital, also included admissions to a false official statement, aggravated assault involving a second victim, and indecent recording involving a third victim, a pattern that Resendiz’s mother says the Navy should have stopped long before it turned fatal.

Copeland told the court plainly what he did.

“I killed CS3 Resendiz on May 29, 2025… I strangled her with my hands.”

Under the plea agreement, Copeland faces a minimum of 40 years in prison, a dishonorable discharge, forfeiture of all pay, reduction in rank, and sex offender registration. Resendiz’s body was found in a wooded area in Norfolk in June 2025, roughly 10 miles from Naval Station Norfolk, where both sailors were stationed. A medical examiner had previously ruled her cause of death undetermined.

That ruling left Resendiz’s mother, Esmi Castle, without answers for months. Monday’s courtroom admission changed that, but it did not bring her peace.

A mother’s questions about what the Navy knew

Castle told Fox News Digital that hearing Copeland admit responsibility answered the question that had haunted her since her daughter’s death. But the relief was narrow. What replaced it was a harder question: why did the Navy let a sailor with a documented record of harming women remain in a position to harm again?

“If they would have dealt with him when he started harming women, he would never have gotten to Angie.”

Asked whether Copeland had a history of violence against women, Castle did not hesitate.

“Absolutely, yes. There were four other women before he harmed Angie in the military.”

The guilty pleas themselves lend weight to that claim. Beyond the murder charge, Copeland admitted to aggravated assault involving a second victim and indecent recording involving a third. Those are not the acts of a man whose behavior came out of nowhere. They describe an escalating pattern, one that, if Castle’s account is accurate, the Navy had opportunities to interrupt.

Fox News Digital reached out to the U.S. Navy for comment. No response was reported.

Inside the barracks room

Copeland’s own account of the night paints a grim picture. He told the court that Resendiz came to his barracks room on May 29, 2025. The two drank alcohol and kissed. Then, he said, she became upset after seeing something on his phone. Copeland admitted he strangled her while trying to keep her from attracting the attention of other sailors.

That detail deserves scrutiny. A man who kills to avoid being noticed is a man who understands what he is doing is wrong, and fears consequences from peers, not from the system that was supposed to hold him accountable long before that night.

Resendiz, by her mother’s account, was focused on building a career. Castle described a young woman working hard to advance in rank, a sailor doing everything she could to prepare for promotion. The kind of service member the military says it wants to retain.

“She was trying to grow. She was doing everything she could to get ready for promotion.”

Instead, her body was found in the woods miles from base. The violent end of a life that should have been protected by the institution she served, a pattern of sudden violence leaving families devastated and demanding accountability from the systems that failed.

A broken system, by the numbers

Castle’s criticism goes beyond one sailor and one failure. She argues that active-duty service members who are victims of violence often lack meaningful avenues to seek accountability outside the military justice system. That system, she says, has not kept pace with the reforms Congress has mandated.

“We have statutes, and we have policies, and we have procedures that were implemented by Congress to protect service members from this type of violence. And nothing’s changed.”

The claim is sharp. Congress has passed legislation in recent years aimed at reforming how the military handles sexual assault and related violence, including removing certain prosecution decisions from the chain of command. Castle’s contention is that the structural changes have not translated into real protection on the ground.

She described a culture where victims face retaliation rather than support.

“There’s no justice. Victims are retaliated against. They get transferred. They get moved around.”

That framing, victims shuffled, perpetrators left in place, is the precise institutional failure that allows a sailor like Copeland to accumulate victims. Four women before Resendiz, Castle said. Then a fifth. Then a murder. The question is not whether warning signs existed. It is why no one acted on them.

The pattern of prior red flags going unaddressed before lethal violence is not unique to the military, but the military’s closed system makes the failure harder to excuse. Commanders control housing, assignments, discipline, and access. When they fail to act, victims have nowhere else to turn.

After the hearing

Castle did something after the court-martial that few mothers in her position would have the composure to do. She spoke directly with Copeland.

“I thanked him for telling the truth.”

She also told Fox News Digital she believes Copeland can still choose to do some good.

“He still can choose better.”

That is not softness. It is the kind of moral clarity that comes from a mother who has already lost everything the system could take from her. Castle is not asking for leniency. She is asking for honesty, from Copeland, from the Navy, and from the military justice apparatus that let her daughter walk into a barracks room with a man who had already harmed multiple women.

Castle has channeled her grief into advocacy. She recently traveled to Washington, D.C., with advocacy groups and other military families to push for reforms aimed at protecting service members from sexual violence. The trip puts her in a growing community of families who have lost children to failures inside the armed forces, not on the battlefield, but in barracks and on bases where safety should be a given.

“We technically have all lost our kids.”

The 40-year minimum sentence Copeland faces is significant. A dishonorable discharge, forfeiture of all pay, and sex offender registration will follow him for life. But sentencing one man does not fix the system that allowed him to operate. The broader challenge of stopping dangerous individuals before they escalate remains unresolved in both civilian and military contexts.

The real failure

Copeland’s guilty plea closes one chapter. But Castle’s questions open another that the Navy has yet to answer. If four women reported harm before Resendiz, what happened to those reports? Who reviewed them? Who decided Copeland could remain in the barracks, in uniform, with access to more potential victims?

The Navy’s silence, Fox News Digital reached out for comment and no response was included, speaks for itself. Institutions that cannot explain their failures invite the worst possible conclusions about them.

Resendiz was 21. She was a culinary specialist working toward promotion at Naval Station Norfolk. She joined the Navy to build a life. The institution she trusted to provide order and safety instead housed her alongside a man whose record of violence against women was, by her mother’s account, already known.

The military asks young Americans to trust it with their lives. That trust is supposed to mean something beyond the battlefield. When families lose loved ones to preventable tragedies, the institution owes them more than silence and a plea deal.

Congress wrote the reforms. The Navy adopted the policies. A 21-year-old sailor is still dead. At some point, the gap between what the rules say and what actually happens on base stops being a bureaucratic shortcoming and starts being a choice.