John A. Carroll dies in Iraq

District native killed in Iraq

Sgt. John A. Carroll, who grew up in Greene County and Lawrenceville, was a drifter before finding a home in the Army.

Carroll, 26, died Sept. 6 in Iraq after being wounded by small-arms fire while on patrol in Ramadi.

"I last talked to him about three weeks ago," his mother, Dawn Petrakovits, of Lawrenceville, said Tuesday. "He said, 'Don't worry. I'll be safe. I'll be back. I am not here for the glory. I want to do my job and come home.' "

Carroll was a native of Nemacolin whose family moved to Pittsburgh when he was 8.

Petrakovits said her son was a happy child who liked to make other people laugh.

"He liked to clown around. When he was 9 years old, he said he wanted to be the Bob Hope of his generation," she said.

Frank Petrakovits described his stepson as being "very good-natured. He was extremely friendly, very outgoing."

He said Carroll would have made a good journalist because he was inquisitive and easily struck up conversations with strangers.

"Even as a little boy, he liked to talk to people. He would even ask the bus driver, 'Do you like your job?' Things like that," Frank Petrakovits said.

Carroll was 14 when he decided to move to Atlanta to live with his father, Rodger Carroll. Following high school, he drifted through several states before enlisting in Ponca City, Okla.

"He called me and said, 'Mom, you're not going to be happy about this.' He joined the military because he needed a job," Dawn Petrakovits said.

She said her son, who re-enlisted after his first tour of duty, was humble about his military service and was humbled when people would thank him for serving his country.

"He said, 'I never know what to say because I'm just doing my job,' " his mother said.

Maj. Wayne Marotto, with the 1st Armored Division in Wiesbaden, Germany, said Carroll and the other members of his unit were providing security and searching for enemy fighters and weapons when the fatal shooting occurred.

"They're looking for the bad guys, that's for sure," said Marotto, who described the Ramadi area as lawless. "They've gotten into some pretty tough fighting there."

Services are being planned in McMinnville, Tenn., where Carroll and his wife, Jessica, planned to settle down.

The couple, who went climbing in the Alps last year, "wanted to live in Tennessee because they loved mountain climbing and camping," Petrakovits said.

Carroll is survived by four siblings: Micah Carroll, of Hawaii; Benjamin Beardsley, who lives in Japan; Elizabeth Carroll, of Brooklyn, N.Y.; and Rebekah Petrakovits, of Lawrenceville.

Read the rest at the Tribune Review

NOTE: No further information has been publicly available since this announcement. Any further information appreciated at iraqnam@fastmail.fm.