An American soldier from Queens, Staff Sergeant Regilio Nelom, was killed on September 17 near Al Asad, Iraq, when an explosive device detonated near his military vehicle during an escort mission, the Department of Defense said yesterday.

Nelom, 45, was assigned to the 249th Quartermaster Company, 1st Corps Support Command at Fort Bragg, N.C., the military said. The company was deployed on June 8, according to the Blackjack Provider, an authorized publication of the 1st Corps Support Command. The company is responsible for driving palletized load system trucks that are used for ammunition distribution.

Nelom moved to New York City from Suriname in northern South America in the late 1980s, his wife Cynthia Nelom, told The New York Sun in a telephone interview last night from Killeen, Texas. He served in the Air Force in Suriname, she said. Living first in Brooklyn with his aunt and uncle, and then in Queens, Nelom worked at McDonald’s, as a meal carrier in an office, and as a newspaper deliveryman.

Nelom and his wife were childhood friends in Paramaribo, the capital of Suriname. They reunited in 1989 when her brother ran into him in Manhattan and invited him to Thanksgiving dinner. She had moved to America three years earlier and lived in the Bronx. They dated for two years before marrying in 1991.

Her husband, Ms. Nelom said, joined the army in 1993 and was stationed in Fort Irwin, Calif. He was later stationed in Germany and South Korea before he joined the 249th Quartermaster Company for its second tour of duty in Iraq. In Iraq, he organized trucking missions and later drove the vehicles himself.

“He tried to convince me: ‘Don’t worry. I’m being careful,'” she said. “My husband was someone who loved what he was doing.” In Suriname, she said, he published a comic book about a “hero saving people” and had ambitions to write a book about the history of Suriname, writing parts of it during his free moments in Iraq.

Nelom left behind two daughters of ages 11 and 14.