YANGON: The wife of a reporter shot by Myanmar soldiers while in army custody denounced on Wednesday the military’s version of the killing, as the United States voiced “serious concern” over the incident.

At an emotional press conference in Yangon, Thandar angrily dismissed an army statement on the shooting, which said that her husband was a member of a rebel group in the volatile eastern border region where he was arrested in early October.

“My husband was never a member of an armed group. His friends and everyone who knows him knows that he was a very gentle person. He was never in a fight,” she told reporters of her husband Aung Naing, who was also known as Par Gyi.

Aung Naing was gunned down as he tried to flee detention in the town of Kyaikmaraw in the southeastern state of Mon on October 4, according to a statement last week from the military.