Fatality in Iraq
leaves isle widow
The fifth soldier from the 25th Infantry Division killed in Iraq this year has been identified as Staff Sgt. Todd E. Nunes.
Nunes, 29, of Chapel Hills, Tenn., was killed Sunday in the northern city of Kirkuk when his convoy encountered an improvised explosive device. He was assigned to 1st Battalion, 21st Infantry Regiment. His widow lives in Hawaii.
Ten other soldiers from his unit were wounded in the same attack at a traffic control point that also included an exchange of small arms fire with insurgents.
Last weekend, the 25th Division also suffered its first fatality in Afghanistan when Spc. Phillip L. Witkowski, 24, of Fredonia, N.Y., died in a German hospital from wounds he received Friday while mounting an M-249 machine gun on his Humvee in Kandahar. He was assigned to the 7th Field Artillery.
As of yesterday, 756 U.S. service members have died since the beginning of military operations in Iraq last year, according to the Department of Defense. Of those, 549 died as a result of hostile action and 207 died of non-hostile causes.
Eleven soldiers with island ties and one civilian -- Big island resident Wesley Batalona -- have been killed in Iraq since the war began. Batalona, 48, was one of four American contractors killed in Fallujah March 31. Their bodies were burned and two hung from a bridge. Batalona was killed when the vehicle he was in was hit by rocket-propelled grenades.
On Saturday, two other Tropic Lightning soldiers -- Staff Sgt. Oscar Vargas-Medina, 32, of Chicago, and Spc. Ramon C. Ojeda, 22, of Ramona, Calif. -- were killed when a group from radical Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr's al-Mahdi Army militia attacked a military supply convoy outside the southern city of Al Amarah.
The Army said Ojeda's widow, Lesliee, also is assigned to the 25th Infantry Division and was deployed to Iraq. She is expected to accompany her husband's body to California for his funeral. The couple have a 14-month-old son.
His father, Joaquin Ojeda, who lives in Santa Ysabel, told the North County Times that his son was "was a good boy ... my only boy. ... He never gave anyone any trouble ... and he loved to make people laugh."
Ojeda told the newspaper he knows his son "died for the cause that he thought was correct." Ojeda joined the Army at 17, his father said, and was serving his second tour of duty.
"He believed in what he was doing," his father said. "He wanted everyone to have the freedom we have."
Vargas-Medina's mother, Francia Lopez, told the Associated Press that her son called her in Florida on Thursday, saying his unit was being sent to Fallujah -- one of the hotspots in southern Iraq -- on a "very dangerous mission." He and Ojeda were assigned to the Tropic Lightning's 84th Engineer Battalion.
Vargas-Medina told her then: "Mommy, on Mother's Day, please be home because I sent you a surprise."
"I feel destroyed. He was my firstborn and he had no father," Lopez said. "I raised him by myself. He was my life."
Vargas-Medina, 32, had been in the Army for 12 years and attended Roberto Clemente High School in Chicago before enlisting in the Army. He was born in Colombia and came the United States in 1984 to join his mother.
"He loved the Army. He used to say the Army is the best place to be. He felt strongly about going to Iraq. He felt it was necessary to fight for their freedom," Lopez said.
His wife also lives at Schofield Barracks.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.BACK TO TOP |
Foreign wars claim 12 with Hawaii ties
Eleven soldiers and one civilian with Hawaii ties have been killed:
IRAQ
2004>> March 18: Pfc. Ernest Sutphin, 21, of Parkersburg, W.Va., of the 25th Infantry Division, in Al Hawija.
>> March 31: Wesley Batalona, 48, of the Big Island, one of four American contractors for Blackwater Security, in Fallujah.
>> April 4: Spc. John Amos II, 20, of Valparaiso, Ind., of the 25th Division, in the northern Iraqi city of Kirkuk.
>> May 1: Staff Sgt. Oscar D. Vargas-Medina, 32, of Chicago, Ill.; and Spc. Ramon C. Ojeda, 22, of Ramona, Calif., of the 25th Division, south of Al Amarah.
>> May 2: Staff Sgt. Todd E. Nunes, 29, of Chapel Hills, Tenn., of the 25th Division, in Kirkuk.
2003
>> March 30: Sgt. Eugene Williams, 24, a former 25th Division soldier whose wife and two children live in Wahiawa, north of Najaf.
>> Sept. 1: Staff Sgt. Cameron Sarno, 43, formerly of Waipahu, a member of the Army Reserve's 257th Transportation Company, in Kuwait.
>> Nov. 7: Chief Warrant Officer Sharon T. Swartworth, 43, an official in the Army Judge Advocate General's Corps, who had planned to retire in Mililani, near Tikrit.
>> Nov. 15: Sgt. 1st Class Kelly Martin Liberato Bolor, 37, of Maui , of the 101st Airborne Division, in northern Iraq.
>> Nov. 15: 2nd Lt. Jeremy L. Wolfe, 27, of Menomonie, Wis., commissioned through the University of Hawaii Army ROTC program, in Mosul.
AFGHANISTAN
2004>> May 1: Spc. Phillip L. Witkowski, 24, of Fredonia, N.Y., of the 25th Infantry Division, taken to a hospital from Kandahar.
