Carson soldiers killed in Afghanistan ID'd

Three Fort Carson soldiers were killed by a roadside bomb in Afghanistan Saturday, the Department of Defense announced today.

Killed were Cpl. Jonathan M. Walls, 27, of West Lawn, Penn., Pfc. Richard K. Jones, 21, of Person, N.C., and Pvt. Patrick S. Fitzgibbon, 19, of Knoxville, Tenn.

They were serving with the the 1st Battalion, 12th Infantry Regiment, 4th Brigade Combat Team, 4th Infantry Division in Mushan Village. 

Eight months in, this year is already the second-deadliest year for U.S. troops in Afghanistan, according to the Washington Post. So far, 133 Americans have died. In 2008, 155 were killed.

Since President Obama’s order for tens of thousands more U.S. soldiers to mount attacks against the Taliban in the southern province of Helmand, “military analysts have predicted more violence as the soldiers push into areas long held by the Taliban,” the newspaper reported.

Fort Carson has felt the marked increase in violence. The 4th Infantry Division deployed in late May and has seen 6 casualties. All 8 of Carson’s deaths in Afghanistan since the start of the war there have been in the last two months.

In all, Fort Carson has lost 262 soldiers to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Walls had been in the Army for four years and served a year-long tour in Iraq between 2006 and 2007 before he deployed to Afghanistan in May.

“Wishing that IED would send me home..... alive!!!!” Walls, an Army Commendation Medal recipient, wrote on his MySpace page on July 15. “I hate Afghanistan.”

Walls’ Myspace page says he has a pregnant wife named Meghan and two kids in Colorado Springs.

Fitzgibbon had been in the Army for 8 months. Jones joined last September.

_

Gazette reporter Dean Toda contributed to this report.