 Des Moines Register -- A Davenport soldier was among five Americans killed last week when a suicide bomber rammed a truck filled with explosives into a wall surrounding a police headquarters in northern Iraq.
U.S. Army Cpl. Jason Graham Pautsch, 20, died in what military officials described as the single deadliest attack on against U.S. forces in more than a year.
David Pautsch was informed of his son's death Friday night.
The elder Pautsch is an advertising executive and founder of Thy Kingdom Come Ministries in Davenport.
Pautsch posted this message Saturday on his Web site: "Of course, I'm stunned and numb. It seems like just a bad dream. However, the greatest comfort of all is knowing that Jason is with the Lord in heaven."
Relatives could not be reached for comment Saturday.
"He was a good kid," said Jane Artman-Andrews, principal of Davenport North High School, where Jason Pautsch graduated in 2007."I was talking to his football coach, and we both said that we weren't surprised he was the squadron leader. It was in him."
Pautsch is the second North graduate to died in Iraq. U.S. Army Pfc. Katie Soenksen a 2005 graduate, was killed in 2007 when her convoy was attacked in Baghdad.
Artman-Andrews said grief counselors will be available for students and teachers this week.
"It brings the reality of the war home," she said. "We hear about it on the news and read about it in the newspaper, but when it touches the lives of those who we sat in class with and went to prom with, its an entirely different story."
David Pautsch's Web site said members of the family were traveling to Dover Air Force Base in Delaware on Saturday to be there when his body arrives.
Jason Pautsch, a squadron leader in the Army's 4th Infantry Division, is the 69th person with Iowa ties who have died in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, according to Des Moines Register records.
Two Iraqi policemen were also killed in the attack on Friday. A sixth American soldier and 17 Iraqi policemen were wounded in the blast that took place near the national police headquarters in southwestern Mosul - Iraq's third-largest city and al-Qaida's last urban stronghold.
The Associated Press reported that U.S. troops must leave the city by June 30 under an agreement with the Iraqis. The approaching deadline has raised fears about what will happen after American soldiers depart.
Lt. Col. Michael Stuart, chief of U.S. operations in Tikrit, north of Baghdad, told the AP that the target of the blast was the Iraqi national police complex in Mosul and not the U.S. patrol. He said the American patrol just happened to be on the same street when the attack occurred.
The suicide bomber drove a truck filled with grain. He made a sharp turn as he approached the police complex, then rammed his truck through an iron barrier, hit a sandbagged wall beyond it and detonated his vehicle near the station's main building. The U.S. military said two people were detained in connection with the attack. |
