Omar J. McKnight

Tuesday, January 20 2009 @ 04:59 AM MST

The Times-Picayune -- When Eliot McKnight heard the doorbell ring Sunday at 1:26 a.m., he sensed the news wouldn't be good.

An Army veteran from Operation Desert Storm with two sons serving in Iraq, McKnight was well aware of the risks inherent in the military. And when he opened the door to his Marrero home and saw who was behind it, he braced himself.

"When you get two military people showing up at your door, you know something's wrong," McKnight said Monday night.

His worst fears were soon realized as the pair informed him that his youngest son, Omar McKnight, 22, had died in Balad, Iraq, during his second tour of duty as a senior airman with the Air Force. Though the U.S. Defense Department said the death resulted from a "non-hostile" incident, McKnight said military officials told him his son had been shot. "An explanation hasn't come to us yet," McKnight said. "It's needed for formal closure. Not like it'll help anything, but it's good to know."

An investigation is still pending, and McKnight expects to learn more details today. Efforts to reach the Air Force public information office Monday night were unsuccessful.

McKnight described his son as a quiet, "easygoing kid," with respectful manners, a good head on his shoulders and an obsession with updating the photos on his MySpace page. He was also the baby of the family, the youngest of three boys, his father said.

"He was just a special person, always smiling," said his mother, Sheryl McKnight. "Anything he could do to help someone, he would."

As a freshman at Higgins High School, Omar had dreamed about following in the footsteps of his father and his older brother, Trumain, who is now serving with the Air Force's special operations unit in Iraq.

"His whole life was the military," McKnight said. "He did four years in ROTC in high school. It was evident."

In 2006, three weeks after graduating from Higgins, Omar joined the Air Force. He attended basic training at Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio, Texas, and was later assigned to the 6th Security Forces Squadron at the MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa, Fla.

His parents didn't know the type of work he had performed in Iraq but said he had served as a firefighter at the base in Tampa. The air base in Balad, which is north of Baghdad, is one of the largest in Iraq.

About a dozen family members gathered Monday at the Marrero home where Omar had lived almost his entire life. Both of his brothers had been notified and were trying to return to Louisiana, McKnight said.

"They're not taking it very well," he said, adding that the three boys had been especially close.

McKnight acknowledged the bittersweet timing of his son's death, falling just before the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday and the historic inauguration of Barack Obama. But such thoughts of celebration now seemed a distant memory.

"We're just trying to bring his body home and bring closure," McKnight said.

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