A second serviceman died Tuesday from wounds suffered in a grenade attack blamed on an Army sergeant, the military said. Air Force Maj. Gregory Stone, 40, based in Boise, was pronounced dead at an Army field hospital in Kuwait, the Idaho Air National Guard said. Sgt. Asan Akbar is in custody in the attack. He was shipped to a military jail in Germany on Tuesday after a judge found probable cause to try him for the crime. Akbar, an American Muslim who told family members he was wary of going to war in Iraq, has not been charged. Capt. Christopher Scott Seifert, 27, of Easton, Pa., was killed and 14 other soldiers were injured in the attack.
Lt. Col. Tim Marsano, spokesman for the Idaho Air National Guard, said Stone, a 20-year active and reserve veteran of the Air Force, was the Air Liaison Officer with the Army's 101st Airborne Division at Camp Pennsylvania. ``My son died to allow the guy who killed him to believe what he believed,'' his father, Richard Stone of Riggins, Idaho, told television station KIVI. The father said his last contact with his son was through an e-mail Saturday. In it, Stone, said things were going well and he was a little nervous but ready for the mission. Stone graduated from Benson High School in Portland, Ore., and Oregon State University. He enlisted in 1983, went through the ROTC program at Oregon State and was commissioned in 1988. ``He was wonderful, the best son anybody could ask for,'' said his stepmother, Sally Stone of Riggins, Idaho. Stone's mother, Betty Lenzi of Ontario, Ore., said she was too upset to talk. Stone had two sons, ages 11 and 7, who live in Boise.
Major Stone sounds like a great guy, just the kind of guy I'd like as a neighbor. We will remember you. |