PDA

View Full Version : Navy Medic in Iraq Is Killed in Action



thedrifter
03-27-03, 07:37 PM
Mar 27, 8:20 PM EST

Navy Medic in Iraq Is Killed in Action

By CARYN ROUSSEAU
Associated Press Writer

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. (AP) -- A Navy medic in Iraq was killed in action while tending to wounded comrades, his relatives said Thursday.

Hospital Corpsman Third Class Michael Vann Johnson Jr., 25, was killed in action Tuesday, according to the Defense Department, which did not immediately say how he died.

But his older sister, Janisa Hooks, said military officials provided details when they visited the family's Little Rock home Thursday.

"He was there to help someone who was injured," Hooks said. "There was a grenade and shrapnel hit him in the head.

"The men he trained with, they were like brothers," she said. "He didn't want to see them go over and fight and he sit back and do nothing. So he felt that there was a need for him to be there."

Johnson's family learned of his death Thursday morning, when his wife, Cherice, called them from San Diego, where he had been stationed.

"That's our hero," Hooks said. "He did it for us and our country, so we can continue to walk around the United States and be free. He made peace with God and himself before he went over."

Johnson's mother, Jana Norfleet, wearing a red, white and blue T-shirt, said she recently received a letter from her son in which he said he was going to be OK.

He wrote that "God had twisted a guardian angel around him," Norfleet said.

Johnson was assigned to the 3rd Marine Division Detachment. He was born and raised in Little Rock and graduated from the University of Central Arkansas in Conway.

Holding the plaques Johnson won in high school, Hooks said her brother, one of eight children, was a smart man who had many friends.

"Mikey was a fun person," she said. "He liked to draw and he loved basketball, a real people's person."

The family said Johnson's body would be shipped to California and then brought to Little Rock, where a funeral is planned


Sempers,

Roger


http://us.news2.yimg.com/us.yimg.com/p/ap/20030327/capt.1048805145.war_us_iraq_kia_lr102.jpg

Michael Vann Johnson Jr., of Little Rock, Ark., is shown in a 2001 Johnson family photo made in California. Johnson, a Navy Medic, was the first Arkansas serviceman to die in the war in Iraq (news - web sites). Johnson, 25, serving as a corpsman in the 3rd Battalion of the 5th Marine Expeditionary Force, died Tuesday, March 25, 2003, while tending to wounded soldiers. (AP Photo/Courtesy of Johnson Family)