Justin R. Garcia killed by I.E.D.

With his wife of just over a year expecting their first child in three months, Spc. Justin R. Garcia bubbled with excitement and expectation at the thought of being a parent.

But Garcia, of Elmhurst, who started his first tour of duty in Iraq in late June, was killed Tuesday when a roadside bomb detonated near his Humvee during combat operations in Baghdad, the U.S. Department of Defense announced Friday.
"He wanted all those crazy things, a home, a family, all those things we take for granted," said his older sister, who asked not to be named. "He couldn't wait to be home with his baby."

Garcia, 26, a mortar man, enlisted in the Army in July 2004. He was assigned to the 1st Battalion, 23rd Infantry Regiment, 3rd Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division at Fort Lewis in Washington state, at the end of November 2004.

"He wanted to go into the service because he had compassion and he wanted to serve his country," Garcia's grandfather, Sam Lim, said Friday, fighting back tears outside the modest, two-story frame house in Elmhurst where his grandson grew up. "He loved being a soldier."

The death of Garcia and that of Col. Thomas H. Felts Sr., of Sandston, Va., killed in the same incident, brings the total of military personnel killed in Iraq so far this month to 45. All told, 2,865 soldiers have been killed since the war began in March 2003, the Department of Defense said.

Felts was the first colonel to be killed since the start of the Iraq conflict, Pentagon officials said.

Garcia spent his childhood in Florida, where he lost both of his parents when he was 12, said his grandfather, who declined to elaborate.

Growing up in Elmhurst with his grandfather, Garcia attended St. Agnes Boys High School on the Upper West Side.

While earning a bachelor's degree in criminal justice at St. Thomas Aquinas College in Rockland County, he met his wife-to-be, Michelle, Lim said.

Ever the "protective" one, as his sister described him, Garcia aspired to become a state trooper.

"He's my little brother, but I always felt he was protecting me," she said. "I always felt safe when he was around."

He was a pillar, but he was also a regular guy, a rabid New York Knicks and Mets fan and ever the cutup, his sister said.

"He was a ham," his grandfather said.

From Newsday