Reynold Armand reported killed in Iraq

ROCHESTER - "I feel like I'm sleeping and having a bad dream. A nightmare."

A local mother mourns the death of her son, a marine who paid the ultimate sacrifice for his country. Marine Corporal Reynold Armand is the 13th local serviceman to be killed in Iraq. Corporal Armand was killed Tuesday in the city of Fallujah. He was 21 years old and a graduate of Eastridge High School.

His family is not only sad. They are angry over the Iraq war. "I hate the war," said his mother Alma Armand. "I hate what it's doing." What it did was kill her son.

"I feel a lot of hatred. I'm very angry," she said.

"Angry at who?" this reporter asked. "The war. Angry that there has to be one," Armand said. "Angry because I know there's no end to it and they're just killing our kids."

Corporal Armand joined the Marines in 2004, months after he graduated from Eastridge. He was halfway through his first tour in Iraq. He was home on leave just two weeks ago.

"That was the best gift I could have gotten was for him to come home and spend time with his family for two weeks," said Miriam Velez, the woman who raised Armand. "But now looking back at it, I feel like it was his good bye."

Pictures from his visit home show Armand leaving for his flight back to the war. It's the last image his family has.

"I was overjoyed when I saw him two weeks ago and I was hoping that I would be able to see him again," said Porfirio Mercado, an uncle. "But it's not going to happen."

"I keep thinking that maybe it was a mistake," Alma Armand said. "That maybe he was just kidnapped or something and that they'll bring him back. But that's not what happened."

Two Marines came to Armand's father's home in the city Tuesday night. They would not say much other than that Armand died after he was shot in the head.

The family still has not made funeral arrangements yet.

From WHEC 10