Army Sgt. Daniel Michael Shepherd

Died August 15, 2004 Serving During Operation Iraqi Freedom

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23, of Elyria, Ohio; assigned to the 1st Battalion, 16th Infantry Regiment, 1st Brigade, 1st Infantry Division (Mechanized), Fort Riley, Kan.; killed Aug. 15 when his M2 Bradley Fighting Vehicle hit an improvised explosive device in Ramadi, Iraq.

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Ohio soldier killed in Iraq never saw infant son

Associated Press

ELYRIA, Ohio — A soldier from Ohio, killed by a homemade bomb in Iraq, never got to see his son, who friends say looks just like his father.

Sgt. Daniel Michael Shepherd, 23, died Sunday in Ramadi, Iraq, after his M2 Bradley Fighting Vehicle hit a homemade bomb, U.S. Army spokeswoman Martha Rudd said. He served with the Army’s 1st Battalion, 16th Infantry Regiment, and was based in Fort Riley, Kan.

His unit was due home in less than a month.

Shepherd enlisted in the Army after graduating from high school in 2000 and had been stationed at Fort Riley since December 2000. He was deployed in September 2003.

Shepherd was supposed to get out of the military soon and wanted to go to college, his grandmother, Celia Siek, said Monday.

After getting the news on Sunday, Shepherd’s parents traveled to Fort Riley, Kan., to be with their daughter-in-law, Kassie, and grandson, Daniel, Siek said.

Shepherd’s son was born on St. Patrick’s Day, said Jo Ellen Horn, whose daughter was visiting Kassie when she got the news of her husband’s death. Daniel looked just like his father, Horn said.

Shepherd, who grew up in Elyria, southwest of Cleveland, played center and tight-end on the Columbia High School football team, Siek said.

Shepherd met his wife in high school, said Kathy Banyasz, the mother of one of his former football teammates.

“She missed him terribly and couldn’t wait for him to come home,” Banyasz said.

Jo Ellen Horn’s son, Chris Horn, said Shepherd used to give him rides to football practice during the summer.

“He seemed like he knew what he wanted to do from the get-go,” Horn said. “He said he wanted to be in the military and then when he got out, he wanted to become a cop.”

Shepherd was the second Fort Riley soldier killed in recent days. On Friday, 1st Lt. Neil A. Santoriello, 24, of Verona, Penn., was killed in Khalidiyah when a bomb detonated near his patrol. He was a member of the 1st Battalion, 34th Armored, also of the 1st Brigade, 1st Infantry Division.

About 4,600 soldiers from Fort Riley are deployed in Iraq.

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Soldier killed in Iraq laid to rest

ELYRIA, Ohio — Residents, many holding flags or putting a hand over their hearts, stood along a 5-mile route from the chapel to the cemetery where a soldier killed in Iraq was buried.

Sgt. Daniel M. Shepherd, 23, was buried with military honors on Saturday in his hometown southwest of Cleveland. He was killed Aug. 15 when his military vehicle was struck by a homemade bomb.

He had been scheduled to leave Iraq one week later, expecting to see his 6-month-old son for the first time.

The infant, sometimes asleep and sometimes wide awake, spent the day of his father’s funeral cradled in the arms of his weeping mother, Kassie.

Shepherd planned on coming home to be a police officer, said Roger Pace, a retired Navy chaplain and minister at Broadview Road Church of Christ in Parma.

In his eulogy, Pace said Shepherd exemplified a devotion to public service and to the well-being of his fellow soldiers. He called such devotion the real motivator for any fighting force.

— Associated Press