Roger A. Suarez-Gonzalez slain by sniper

Oscar Gonzalez didn't want his 21-year-old nephew Roger to join the military, certainly not in the middle of a full-scale war going on in Iraq.

But without money to pay for a college education, the Army seemed like the best way for Roger to realize his dream of becoming a police officer.

That decision cost him his life.

Despite Uncle Oscar's objections, he enlisted last year and turned 22 in May.

Roger Alfonso Suarez-Gonzalez, still a newlywed, arrived in Iraq in October. On Friday, family members coped with the news he is now dead.

''He was a hard worker. He wanted to start from the bottom to reach his goals at the top,'' said his wife, Lady Johana Suarez-Gonzalez, 22, who lives in Weston. ``We had the same dreams, the same goals.''

He called her sometimes from Iraq, often in the middle of the night. They loved the sound of each other's voice, and his wife would soothingly call him ``mi amor.''

During the couple's last phone conversation, Suarez-Gonzalez told his wife, ``Don't worry about me if you don't hear from me for awhile. . . . I'll be in God's hands.''

The couple met in job training classes in Kentucky. He came from Nicaragua, she from Colombia, but the pair shared much in common. Both were raised by their grandparents in their respective homelands and both arrived in this country with hopes of achieving a better life.

They married in March, in a small wedding in Colorado Springs, Colo., where the two shared an apartment with a view of the mountains.

A second wedding ceremony -- in Colombia, where both of their families could attend -- was planned after Suarez-Gonzalez finished his stint in Iraq.

Suarez-Gonzalez died Dec. 4, according to the U.S. Department of Defense.

A Defense Department statement released Friday said Suarez-Gonzalez and another soldier died in Ar Ramadi, Iraq, ``of injuries suffered from small arms fire while conducting security and observation operations.''

Defense Department officials could not be reached for further comment.

''I loved him like a son,'' said Gonzalez, the uncle who let Roger live with him locally for about a year. The uncle-and-nephew team also worked side by side installing home cabinets around Miami-Dade County.

Gonzalez said he is still not convinced his nephew is dead, that it is not some military case of mistaken identity. The Army is asking for a closed-casket funeral and the family wonders why.

Suarez-Gonzalez's wife, now a widow, lamented a world in which ''we are self-destructing ourselves.'' She predicted her family won't be the last to suffer as a result of the events in Iraq.

''Although people won't believe or understand me . . . this is not going to stop here. This is only the beginning of something worse to come,'' she said.

From the Herald