Online Athens -- An Air Force officer from Monroe was killed in Iraq on Tuesday when a homemade bomb went off near his vehicle, the U.S. Department of Defense said.

First Lt. Joseph D. Helton, 24, of Monroe, died near Baghdad of wounds suffered when enemy forces attacked his vehicle with an improvised explosive device, the Defense Department said.

Helton was assigned to the 6th Security Forces Squadron, based at MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa, Fla.

"We'd like to express our deepest sympathy to family, friends and comrades of Lt. Joe Helton for their recent loss," Col. Lawrence Martin, commander of the 6th Air Mobility Wing, said in a statement posted on the MacDill Air Force Base's Web site. "We are deeply saddened by his loss and very proud of his service."

Helton graduated from the U.S. Air Force Academy in 2007, The Associated Press said. Academy officials say Helton is the 11th graduate killed while serving in Iraq.

Helton was a 2003 graduate of Monroe Area High School, the Walton Tribune reported.

Meadows Funeral Home has charge of funeral arrangements, which were incomplete Thursday.

Helton was the first Athens-area serviceman killed in fighting in Iraq or Afghanistan in more than a year. Army Staff Sgt. Shaun Whitehead, 24, a Commerce was killed April 24, 2008, by an IED while he was on foot patrol in Iskandariyah, south of Baghdad.

==Another news story==

The Associated Press -- If someone had a question, Joseph D. Helton was the man to go to for the answer.

“He just looked like he knew the answers,” said his mother, Jiffy. He was comfortable cooking his signature treat, baklava, and cleaning, but he also had a “quiet, commanding presence,” she said.

Helton, 24, of Monroe, Ga., died Sept. 8 near Baghdad when the vehicle he was in hit a roadside bomb. He admired his family’s service — his parents, grandparents and three uncles all had been in the armed forces — and doodled battleships and fighter jets as a child.

The daydreaming was not in vain: He went to the Air Force Academy, graduating in 2007. He then was assigned to MacDill Air Force Base, Fla. He didn’t want to leave his sisters behind, but his mother insisted he follow his dream.

“He felt like he had to stay around home and take care of the girls and me,” Jiffy Helton said. “He felt like he was the man of the house.”

Helton also wrote a blog while in Iraq, writing that the people he met were “just like us on a basic, human level.”

He is survived by his mother; father, Joseph; and his sisters.