Detroit Free Press -- As a child, Andrew Waits was fun, sweet and competitive. He captivated neighborhood kids with skateboard tricks, a strong kickball leg and a friendly disposition.

Later, he dreamt of becoming a sheriff's deputy. He seemed to brim with energy and compassion, friends said.

Those memories are helping neighbors like Jodi Brown cope with the death of the boy, turned young man, turned Army soldier. Waits, 23, from Waterford, died Thursday after an improvised explosive device detonated near his vehicle in Iraq, the Department of Defense announced.

The Baghdad blast killed the Army specialist during combat operations, the department said Friday. Waits is the 83rd service member with known Michigan ties to die in Iraq.

"He was a great guy, and he didn't deserve to die," Brown, 24, a close childhood friend, said Sunday. "You couldn't ask for a better friend."

Waits was assigned to the 1st Battalion, 502nd Infantry Regiment, 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 101st Airborne Division at Ft. Campbell, Ky.

"He was really coming into himself," his mother, Diane Waits, told the Oakland Press for a story published Sunday. "I could see the man he was becoming. He was going to be a very special individual."

Waits wanted to become an Oakland County sheriff's deputy after completing his Army service in October, she said.

Waits graduated from Kettering High School in 2001, then worked at a coffee shop and as a restaurant cook until he joined the Army in October 2003. He was deployed to Iraq in September 2005.

Brown said Waits joined the Army in the wake of his father's death.

"I think he needed to get out and find out what the world was like," she said.

Diane Waits last saw her son this month when he was home on leave. "He seemed a little unsettled at first," she said.

He said little about what he experienced in Iraq, where he was a Humvee gunner. While driving at home, he would swerve to avoid potholes or anything that looked unusual in the road, his mother said.

Funeral arrangements were pending.