Army Sergeant Of the Bronx Killed in Iraq
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.
The last time Jessica Irizarry spoke to her husband it was the Sunday before last and the Army sergeant from the Bronx was talking about his plans to return for the holidays.
He was calling from Taji, Iraq, a town 15 miles north of Baghdad that is so hotly contested that some American soldiers have reportedly refused to enter it in recent weeks.
That phone call was the last time they would speak. The sergeant, Henry Irizarry, 38, died four days ago, Defense Department officials said yesterday. The 20-year Army veteran was fatally injured when a homemade bomb exploded near his Humvee while his unit was on patrol.
Ms. Irizarry yesterday spoke of her husband as kind, generous, and devout, a role model for their son, Jacob, 5.
“A lot of people loved him. He was a good man, a good father, and a good friend,” Ms. Irizarry, 25, told The New York Sun yesterday from the family’s home in Waterbury, Conn.
Jacob “is missing his dad,” she said. “He says that his dad is in the sky.”
It was the first time Irizarry had left the country, she said, and their family was expecting him to return home on December 15 to celebrate the winter holidays with family and friends from their local church, where he taught bible study classes.
Irizarry was a member of the 1st Battalion, 69th Infantry Regiment, which is based out of Manhattan and often dubbed the “Fighting 69th.”
The regiment suffered its third casualty in a week.
On November 29, two other New York-based Army National Guardsmen, Sergeant Christian Engledrum, 39, and Private First Class Wilfredo Urbina, 29, were killed when a homemade bomb hit their Humvee.
To date,1,276 GIs have been killed in Iraq since March 2003, according to an ongoing tally compiled by the Associated Press.
In a statement issued yesterday in response to the sergeant’s death, Governor Pataki said, “Irizarry bravely answered the call to duty in Iraq, risking his life to spread the cause of freedom and to make our world safe from threats of terror.”
The governor of Connecticut, M. Jodi Rell, also expressed sympathy for Irizarry’s family and announced that flags in her state would be flown at half-mast.
