Two Illinoisans among dead
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| This undated photo released by Carlos Pena shows Francheska Velez, 21, of Chicago. Velez was one of the victims killed when an Army psychiatrist allegedly opened fire at Fort Hood, Texas on Thursday, Nov. 5, 2009. Her father, Juan Guillermo Velez, says she only recently returned from deployment in Iraq. She was preparing to come home because she was pregnant. (AP Photo/Carlos Pena) |
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BOLINGBROOK (AP) – Family and friends of Michael Pearson and Francheska Velez understood that their joining the military could cost them their lives.
What they couldn’t fathom on Friday was how the two could be shot dead, not at war abroad, but at what should be the safest place for an American solider – a U.S. military base.
The two 21-year-old soldiers from the Chicago area were among the 13 people killed when an Army psychiatrist allegedly opened fire on Thursday at Fort Hood in Texas.
Standing on a porch at the family’s Chicago home, Velez’s teary-eyed father clutched a photograph of his daughter as he tried to grasp that she had been killed after only recently returning from deployment in Iraq. She planned to return home to Chicago soon because she was pregnant.
“It’s like a slap in the face,” said Juan Guillermo Velez, speaking in Spanish. “There’s no logic to it.”
A friend of Velez, Sasha Ramos, also couldn’t reconcile that her friend had been killed in this country – after leaving a war zone.
“This is not something a soldier expects – to have someone in our uniform go start shooting at us,” she said.
Those who knew Pfc. Pearson, who quit his furniture company job to join the military last year, also saw irony in his death on U.S. soil.
“It makes it worse,” said Jessica Koerber, who lives next door to Pearson’s parents. “He was just – wrong place, wrong time.”
At his family home in suburban Bolingbrook, a yellow ribbon was tied to a porch light and a sticker stamped with American flags on the front door read, “United we stand.”
Pearson’s mother, Sheryll Pearson, stepped outside to speak to reporters briefly, saying the 2006 Bolingbrook High School graduate joined the military because he was eager to serve his country and broaden his horizons.
She believed he was set for deployment in January, but didn’t know where.
“He was the best son in the whole world,” she said. “He was my best friend, and I miss him.”
His cousin, Mike Dostalek, added that Pearson, an avid Jimi Hendrix fan, loved playing guitar and writing songs.
In a poem Pearson wrote that Dostalek showed to reporters, he seemed to cherish the prospect of educating himself and growing old.
“I look only to the future for wisdom. To rock back and forth in my wooden chair,” the poem says.
Sheryll Pearson and her husband got a call around 6:30 p.m. on Thursday from their son’s sergeant that he’d been shot in the spine and chest and had lost a lot of blood; around 10 p.m., an Army surgeon called to say he had died, she told the Chicago Tribune.
Because of her son’s year of training – which including learning to deactivate bombs – Sheryll Pearson said she hadn’t seen him for a year. She last talked to him on the phone 2 days ago, discussing how he would come home for Christmas.
