Justin P. Hartford

Tuesday, May 12 2009 @ 03:31 AM MDT

Star Gazette -- A 21-year-old Elmira man died last week at Joint Base Balad, Iraq, of injuries sustained from a non-combat- related incident, according to a press announcement Monday night from the Department of Defense.

Pvt. Justin P. Hartford died Friday. He was assigned to the 699th Maintenance Company, Corps Support Battalion, 916th Support Brigade, Fort Irwin, Calif., the release stated.

The circumstances surrounding the incident are under investigation, the release said.

Pvt. Hartford was in Iraq less than a month, his mother, Alice Hartford, of Elmira, said Monday night. He died six months after the death of her husband of more than 20 years, Paul Hartford, she said, adding that Justin Hartford has an older brother who survived a tour in Iraq and another in Kuwait in the Marines, she said.

"The military showed up at my door Saturday morning, 6:30 in the morning, just like in the movies," Alice Hartford said. "I didn't want to let them in. They asked me three times to come in. I knew that if I opened that door what they were going to say if I let them in. I knew what they were going to say. I just knew."

She let them in the fourth time they asked, she said.

"I just talked to him two days before that. That's why I couldn't believe it. I thought somebody was playing a joke on me, a very cruel joke, and then I found out it wasn't," she said.

Alice Hartford recalled a giving son. "He had a heart of gold," she said.

He was honored with a medal after he found a young man who tried to kill himself with a drug overdose convulsing on a bathroom floor.

"He gave the man mouth-to-mouth resuscitation until an ambulance and paramedics could arrive," Alice Hartford said.

He was also a jokester.

"He loved everybody. He played jokes," she said. "He had the ability to turn on a smile and crack the joke, and as much as you were mad at him, your heart would melt when he told his story or whatever tale he had to tell."

She said she understands her son is the first soldier from Elmira to die in the war in Iraq. His body arrived Monday morning at Dover, Del. She had to sign forms Monday to allow his body to be returned.

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