By Staff
Falls on 9/11 during attack on compound
From Staff, Wire Reports
A fourth Beaufort County resident has died in the war against terror, this time in Afghanistan.
Army Pfc. Michael W. Murdock, 22, of Washington, died Thursday in a northeast province of Afghanistan.
His father is Walter W. Murdock of Washington.
Murdock, who deployed to Afghanistan on June 30, was based at Lybert, his mother said.
He was assigned to Alpha Battery, 3rd Brigade, a field-artillery unit, she said.
Murdock was a 2004 graduate of Washington High School. He was born July 7, 1986.
Murdock joined the Army in June 2006, completing basic training in October 2000 at Fort Leonard Wood, Mo. He completed additional training at Fort Sill, Okla. He was stationed at Fort Hood, Texas, from March 2007 to June 2008 .
Murdock is the second Beaufort County native to die in the war against terror this year.
Army Spc. Joel Allen Taylor, 20, was killed June 24 by a roadside bomb while serving on his first tour in Iraq.
Taylor was the son of Caren Newman and Scottie Taylor, a captain with the Washington Fire-Rescue-EMS-Inspections Department. He was a member of the First Squadron, Third Armored Cavalry Regiment.
Johnathan Kirk, a Marine and 2000 graduate of Northside High School, died May 1, 2007, from wounds he sustained when a roadside bomb exploded in Iraq on April 23.
Kirk, 25, who served in the Marine Corps for about a year, had been deployed to Iraq about a month when he was wounded.
Army Spc. Kevin Jones, 21, was killed Sept. 22, 2005, when the roadside bombed exploded near Al Taqaddum. Jones was assigned to the 181st Transportation Battalion, 7th Corps Support Group, 3rd Corps Support Command in Mannheim, Germany. His unit, the 51st Transportation Company, had been deployed to Iraq. Jones was on a second tour of duty in Iraq when he was killed. After his death, Jones was posthumously promoted to corporal.
Another Beaufort County native, Jeremy Goodman of Washington, still suffers from wounds received Sept. 15, 2005, from a roadside bomb that exploded near his truck in Iraq. Goodman was in Army when he was wounded.
Since the 2001, a total of 519 U.S. troops have died in the Afghan war, including those killed in border areas of Pakistan and in Uzbekistan, which was a staging area in 2001. An additional 65 more have died outside the Afghan region in support of Operation Enduring Freedom, according to the Defense Department.
The Pentagon says 117 U.S. service members died last year in Operation Enduring Freedom, but that includes six deaths outside the Afghan region: two in the Philippines, two in Ethiopia, one in Somalia and one in the Gulf.
The NATO-led force in Afghanistan said one soldier was killed Thursday in the east when insurgents attacked a compound. The separate U.S.-led coalition said a second service member died while conducting combat operations. No other details were released, but a Western military official told The Associated Press that both troops were American.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.