Marine Cpl. Carlos Pineda

Died June 24, 2005 Serving During Operation Iraqi Freedom

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23, of Los Angeles; assigned to Headquarters Company, 8th Marine Regiment, 2nd Marine Division, II Marine Expeditionary Force, Camp Lejeune, N.C.; killed June 24 by enemy small-arms fire while conducting combat operations in Fallujah, Iraq.

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California Marine killed in Iraq

Associated Press

LOS ANGELES — His 5-year-old sister keeps asking when Marine Cpl. Carlos Pineda will come home. Although more than a 100 people packed into his funeral, she insists the man in the wooden box was a doll, not her brother.

“What do I say to her?” asked Pineda’s mother, Silvia Hernandez, on Thursday from her home in Los Angeles. Hernandez buried her oldest son last week after the Camp Lejeune, N.C.-based Marine was killed during combat in Fallujah, Iraq.

“I can tell her that he died doing what he believed in, but the pain is the same,” she said.

Pineda, 23, died July 1, as a result of wounds from enemy small-arms fire. He was assigned to 8th Marine Regiment, 2nd Marine Division, II Marine Expeditionary Force.

Pineda, a native of El Salvador, grew up fast in East Los Angeles. His father was murdered by local gang members when Pineda was 9, and he quickly became the man of the family, acting as an older brother to other kids in the neighborhood.

Pineda, known to his buddies as “Cheese,” took an early interest in law enforcement. He joined the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Explorer Program in high school and became a mentor to at-risk teens, recalled his friend Adrian Pena.

Even former buddies who ended up in gangs respected him and left him alone “because he was doing something with his life,” Pena said.

Pineda entered the Marine Corps after graduating from high school in 2001 and hoped to return to the sheriff’s department.

He married his wife, Ana, last year, and in an e-mail he sent to Pena, days before he was killed, he wrote about her.

“He was telling me he couldn’t wait to come home, and he couldn’t wait to start a family with his wife,” Pena said.

Pineda is also survived by his stepfather and a younger brother.