Carson GI killed, dad says

A Fort Carson soldier who decided to join the Army after 9/11 was killed by a roadside bomb last week during his second tour in Iraq, his father said Monday.

Spc. Eric Lill, 28, of the Chicago area, was riding in a vehicle as a gunner when he was killed about 11 a.m. Friday in Baghdad, said his father, Anthony Lill, of Lawrenceburg, Tenn. His son had been helping train the Iraqi police force with the 2nd Infantry Division’s 2nd Brigade Combat Team. An interpreter was also killed in the blast.

Eric Lill was transferred to Fort Carson from an Army base in Germany after his first deployment, his father said. Eric Lill hoped the move would allow him to spend more time with his two children, 4-year-old Mikayla and 6-yearold Cody, who live in western Illinois with his ex-wife.

He was worried about the dangers of his latest mission when he was deployed last fall, but once in Iraq he told his family that things were “boring” and that they shouldn’t worry.

“I think it was . . . scarier than what he led us to believe,” his father said.

The Chicago native was an avid hockey fan who played from grade school to adulthood, including one year at Marshall University in West Virginia. He was a quiet man with a penchant for pranks. He loved fishing and spending time with his children and was last home in March.

Eric Lill joined the Army in February 2002.

“He really had his heart set and his mind set on being a soldier,” his father said.

Scheduled to be discharged in June 2008, Eric Lill was considering returning to Scholle Corp., a food-packaging plant where he’d once been employed, his father said.

He had also talked about becoming a police officer or applying for the U.S. Secret Service.

The Department of Defense had not released information about the death as of Monday night.

Eric Lill is the 106th 2nd BCT soldier and 215th from a Fort Carson unit to be killed in Iraq since the war began in 2003.

CONTACT THE WRITER: 636-0198 or bnewsome@gazette.com