A Westchester County family is mourning the death of a son killed in action in Iraq.

Private First Class Kevin Cuming,22, of North White Plains, died August 21 when his patrol was hit by rocket-propelled grenades in Baghdad, the Department of Defense said yesterday. The incident is being investigated.

Cuming had been in the Army for 16 months and was assigned to the 1st Squadron, 7th Cavalry Regiment, 1st Cavalry Division, based in Fort Hood, Texas.

Family members, including his parents, William and Yolanda Cuming, and a younger sister, were informed of Cuming’s death Saturday morning. They said they are holding up, “just barely.” Relatives gathered at the family home yesterday to grieve.

“He called us two or three times a week. We talked for like an hour or two,” sister Christine Cuming, 20, told The New York Sun yesterday. “He e-mailed us every other day. He wrote us letters.”

“My dad’s very sick, and he’s not taking it well either. My mom of course is a wreck,” Ms. Cuming said.

Described by his sister as very athletic, Cuming was an avid mountain biker. His family shipped him his bike while he was stationed at Fort Hood; Ms. Cuming said her brother “loved” riding it. He also enjoyed paintball and soccer.

Cuming briefly attended SUNY Oneonta after graduating from Valhalla High School in 1999, and later returned home to attend Westchester Community College.

“He didn’t know what he wanted to do,” Ms. Cuming said. “He did a lot of research. He thought the Army had the best benefits for him.”

Cuming enlisted in April 2003, starting his Army career at Fort Knox in Tennessee. A food service operations soldier, he moved on to Fort Lee in Virginia and then transferred to Fort Hood in September 2003. Last February, Cuming and 17,000 other soldiers in the First Cavalry Division were sent to Iraq.

According to his sister, Cuming became disenchanted with the military during his time overseas.

“He was honest with me and he told me ‘It’s not what I expected. What the recruiters told me, it’s nothing like what it turned out to be,’ ” Ms. Cuming said. “He joined the Army to become a cook and he ended up being in the infantry. He didn’t do any cooking at all. He was counting down the days until he could leave.”

Ms. Cuming said in recent months her brother’s correspondence had slowed as his workload increased. She said, “He was working double shifts. He really didn’t have a lot of free time.”

Cuming was the first New York soldier killed in Iraq since late July, when U.S. Marine Shawn Lane,33, of Corning, N.Y., died in hostile action in Anbar province.