Cpl. Rudy Salas, USMC
The Department of Defense announced on May 22 the death of a Marine who was supporting Operation Iraqi Freedom.
Cpl. Rudy Salas, 20, of Baldwin Park, Calif., died May 20, due a non-combat related vehicle accident in Al Anbar Province, Iraq. He was assigned to 1st Light Armored Reconnaissance Battalion, 1st Marine Division, I Marine Expeditionary Force, Camp Pendleton, Calif.
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Associated Press --
SAN BERNARDINO, California -- A 20-year-old corporal killed in Iraq had wanted to be a Marine since he was a child, his mother said.
Rudy Salas was killed in a vehicle accident on May 20 in Al Anbar Province. He was assigned to the 1st Light Armored Reconnaissance Battalion, 1st Marine Division of the I Marine Expeditionary Force, based at Camp Pendleton.
"He died a hero," said his mother, Elida Salas.
"Since he was little, he liked the Marines," she said. "I don't know why."
Salas, the eldest of five children, played with toy guns with his friends and loved to run. He would sprint home before he could be picked up from school, his mother said.
"He always tried to influence me to go into the military," said his brother Sammy, 19.
Salas, a varsity football player, joined the Marines in 2001 after graduating from Baldwin Park High School. He split his time between his mother's home in San Bernardino and the Baldwin Park home he shared with his girlfriend, Veronica Portillo.
"He was a special boy," said his father, Rodolfo Salas, who told the newspaper that he asks God why his son was taken.
Mrs. Salas expressed anger at the government over her son's death.
"I don't want another mother to feel what I feel," she said.
The family had not received his body and funeral arrangements were pending.
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