Herald Leader -- CHATTANOOGA, Tenn. - Just hours before Army Sgt. David T. Weir was killed in Baghdad, he told his brother in a telephone call that he was in the crossfire of mortars not aimed at him, his brother said Friday.

"He called us pretty frequently," said Chris Weir, one of the slain soldier's five siblings. "He was saying we are just kind of stuck in the middle .... Somebody threw mortars over them and then mortars came back, over the top of them. He said they weren't targeting them. That was his words."

Weir was trained to be a forward observer, calling in fire from air support to protect troops in combat, but his mission recently was more of a policing role, his brother said in a telephone interview from the family's home in Cleveland.

He said Army officials had not yet provided all details about the death of his brother, a member of the 101st Airborne Division. He said they told him the telephone conversation was about four hours before the soldier was killed.

"All we know is they were a dismounted patrol doing security sweeps. He was shot. That's all we know," Chris Weir said as family friends continued to stop by to offer condolences.