Army Sgt. Carl Thomas

Died September 13, 2004 Serving During Operation Iraqi Freedom

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29, of Phoenix.; assigned to the 1st Battalion, 12th Cavalry Regiment, 1st Cavalry Division, Fort Hood, Texas; killed Sept. 13 when an improvised explosive device detonated near his observation post in Baghdad.

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Ex-Arizona man killed by homemade explosive in Iraq

Associated Press

INKSTER, Mich.— A Detroit native who was killed when a homemade explosive detonated near his Army observation post in Iraq has come home to Michigan for burial.

Sgt. Carl Thomas, 29, and another soldier from Fort Hood, Texas, died Sept. 13 in Baghdad. Thomas was assigned to the 1st Battalion, 12th Cavalry Regiment.

He and wife Lanea had three children, 10-year-old Dariaun, 9-year-old Nataisha and 5-year-old Rayqwaun. They lived in Phoenix before Thomas’s assignment to Fort Hood.

The day before his death, mother Alfeeria Johnson of Inkster sat at her computer for a weekly e-mail chat with her son. They talked about how much they looked forward to seeing each other in a few weeks and made plans to celebrate with a barbecue.

“He sounded OK, and he told me to wait on making my flight arrangements,” Johnson told the Detroit Free Press. “He was supposed to be home October.”

“He was an easygoing person. It was hard for him to get mad,” Johnson said, glancing at a picture of her son. “He loved basketball, wrestling and video games. He really loved his kids. He was a normal kid.”

Known as Crit, which is short for Critter, Thomas loved spending time with his family, they said.

“When I saw him after he was born, I said, ‘Look at the little critter,”’ said aunt Diann Wood. “The last time I saw him, he was so tall. What happened to Crit?”

Thomas was born in Detroit and attended elementary and middle schools in Detroit, Southfield and Oak Park. He completed the ninth and 10th grades at Robichaud Senior/Junior High School in Dearborn Heights before moving to Phoenix to live with his father, Johnson said.

He graduated from Marysville High School in Phoenix in 1993. After high school, Thomas worked various jobs before enlisting in the Army. He married on his 23rd birthday.

Lanea Thomas’ grandmother, Arlene Mitchell, recalled hosting the couple’s wedding reception at her Glendale, Ariz., home.

“I know they loved each other,” said Mitchell. “He was very shy, he didn’t talk that much. But everybody liked him.”

The family spent last Christmas together, and Mitchell remembers how much Thomas enjoyed the meal she helped prepare.

“He loved chitlins, and cabbage and cornbread,” she said. “He liked good soul food.”

A family visitation is planned Sept. 24 at New Birth Baptist Church in Inkster, followed by a funeral.

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Former Phoenix soldier killed in Iraq

PHOENIX — A former Phoenix resident was one of two Fort Hood soldiers killed when a homemade explosive detonated near their observation post, authorities said Wednesday.

Sgt. Carl Thomas, 29, formerly of Phoenix, died Monday in Baghdad.

Staff Sgt. Guy S. Hagy Jr., 31, of Lodi, Calif., also was killed.

Both deaths were under investigation, the Defense Department said Wednesday.

Thomas was assigned to the 1st Battalion, 12th Cavalry Regiment, 1st Division, based at Fort Hood, Texas.

He and his wife Lanea had two sons and one daughter.

Lanea’s Thomas’ grandmother, Arlene Mitchell, recalled hosting the couple’s wedding reception at her Glendale home.

“I know they loved each other,” Mitchell said.

Family members had plans to meet in Texas in about a month, when Thomas returned from Iraq, said Mitchell.

“He was very shy, he didn’t talk that much. But everybody liked him,” she said.

The family spent last Christmas together, and Mitchell remembers how much Thomas enjoyed the meal she helped prepare.

“He loved chitlins, and cabbage and cornbread,” she said. “He liked good soul food.”

Mitchell said Thomas would be buried in Michigan, where he was born.

— Associated Press

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Slain soldier known to family as “Crit”

By Hugo Kugiya

Associated Press

Crit, short for Critter, was the name Sgt. Carl Thomas’ Aunt Diann gave him when he was a baby because he looked so tiny. Everyone knew him as Crit. He grew up skinny and scrawny and shy, a Boy Scout and a computer geek.

The name stuck, even after he joined the Army in 1996 and filled out, became more assertive. He became an infantry motorman and was deployed in Panama, South Korea, and Kosovo. The family lived in Germany and in Texas. He rarely was home for more than six months at a time. His three children were accustomed to his absence. They did not know any different.

He was 29 when a bomb exploded near his observation post in Baghdad Sept. 13, 2004.

Before he left for Iraq, Thomas made his wife Lanae watch the movie “We Were Soldiers,” about the soldiers who fought on both sides of an early battle of the Vietnam War. He wanted to prepare her for the worst; if he died, he told her, he wanted to be buried next to his grandfather in Michigan, where he was born.

Are you scared to go?, Lanae asked.

No, he said. This is what I trained for.

He was not born to the Army like some soldiers. He was able and proud, but it was more of a means to an end. He liked that it allowed him to spoil his children, Dariaun, 11, Nataisha, 10, and Rayqwaun, 6, to buy them the latest toys, even ones they were too young to play with. So every three years, he considered the options and re-enlisted.

When he was in Iraq, he called Lanae on a mobile phone in the middle of every night and sent instant messages every morning.

“I’m fine. You guys don’t watch the news,” he often wrote.

She was waiting by her computer the morning the two officers came by and knocked on her door. She did not cry. She did not let them see her break down. “Suck up and drive on,” she heard Crit say in her head.

Crit went to high school in Arizona, but home was still Michigan, and the home team was still the Detroit Lions. The day before Crit died, the Lions beat the Bears 20-16 in the season opener, and the family just knew that he woke up his last morning with a smile on his face.

After he died, the team hosted his family at Ford Field, and dedicated the game — and the game ball — to Crit Thomas.