William W. Crow dies 'of wounds sustained when his vehicle was struck by an improvised explosive device'

INGLIS - It was around 9 p.m. Thursday when Kathryn Modini drove up to her apartment, tired from driving all day from North Carolina. She had seen police cars in the neighborhood but didn't think much of it, thinking it was part of a regular patrol.

She went inside and picked up the phone to call a neighbor when someone knocked on the door.

When she opened it, she saw two Army officers.

"I slammed the door and threw myself to the floor," she said Friday afternoon, still in state of shock and weeping when looking at her son's picture.

Sgt. William Wayne Crow, 28, Modini's only son, was killed in Iraq early Thursday morning when the Humvee he was driving rolled over an improvised explosive device, or an IED.

Mondini held on to Associated Press stories she had printed off the Internet.

She had circled the paragraphs that had mentioned the death of her son: "One American soldier killed" while in a combat patrol in eastern Baghdad, it read.

"He was my baby ... he was my lifeline," she said.

Her daughter, Candace Hudson, sat beside her in their small living room. Her eyes were red, too, from mourning the loss of her brother.

Her cell phone, and the house phone, kept ringing with friends and family wanting to know what happened, to say how sorry they were and how they could help.

Mondini, who had not seen her son since last February, doesn't have all the answers yet.

"Where's my son?'' she cried. "In pieces?"

Miles away, in Fort Riley, Kansas, Crow's wife, Michelle, kept the officers outside her door for 20 minutes early Thursday morning.

"I figured if I didn't let them in, I wouldn't have to know [what happened]," said the mother of four on Friday, her voice sad and monotone on the telephone.

She and Crow got married four years ago. She brought in her two sons, Chris and David, and with Crow, they have two little girls, Alexis and Kala.

Crow wasn't there to see the birth of his daughters.

He wasn't there for Christmas.

And he wasn't there last week when his buddies gathered for their 10th year Belleview High School reunion.

Crow enlisted in the military right out of high school. He first went to Korea. And then to Iraq.

This trip was Crow's third to Iraq. This time, he returned to Iraq 11 months after coming home with a Purple Heart.

"We knew he's not coming back this time. His wife felt something wasn't right. I don't believe he was supposed to be there," Mondini said.

The last time Crow had come back from Iraq, he told his mother that the war was different this time.

"He said it's like they're fighting a ghost, and they were not equipped to fight the ghosts," Mondini recalled.

Little did anyone know that one of those ghosts, an IED, would take the life of the tough-looking, big-hearted man who used to love to go to Ocala to skateboard and hang out with his buddies to crack a joke.

"He was a happy person. He liked to make people laugh. He was a joy to be around," recalled his close friend, David Bowman, who went to high school with Crow.

"It's like losing a brother," Bowman said.

The last time Bowman saw him was five years ago.

The last time his sister saw him was five years ago. And Mondini last talked to him before Mother's Day.

"I'll miss his hugs. I just want to hear him say, 'Mom, I love you. It's going to be OK,'" she said, staring at Crow's photo.

The funeral arrangements for Crow aren't final yet. There will be a small ceremony at Fort Riley where he was in CoA. 2-16 IN, 1st Infantry Division, and another in Abilene, Texas, where he has joint cemetery plot with his wife.

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