A 23-year-old Martinsville, Va., police officer and reservist was one of four Marines killed yesterday when their convoy was ambushed in Iraq, city officials and friends said.
A day before his death, Jonathan W. Bowling telephoned his girlfriend, Tonya McFarling, twice and sent an e-mail card to wish her a happy 26th birthday, McFarling's mother said last night. Earlier yesterday, Bowling's father called the McFarlings with the news, which had not yet been released to the media by the Department of Defense.
Jonathan W. Bowling had wanted to be a state trooper.
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He was "just a real wonderful person . . . just like a son to us. It's just beyond any words," Velma McFarling said in a telephone interview. "This war is just tearing so many lives up."
Bowling had followed the career path of his father, Darrell Bowling, a Virginia State Police master trooper, and joined the Martinsville police in December 2002, city officials said. The 2000 graduate of Patrick County High School in Stuart received an associate's degree in administration of justice at Patrick Henry Community College in 2002.
Police officials said Bowling wanted to become a state trooper but promised to spend at least three years on the Martinsville force. Police Chief Mike Rogers described Bowling as a polite, courteous, disciplined officer who came to work with a positive attitude each day.
"I told his father and several more people in the state police I was doing them a big favor by helping train someone who was going to be one of their best in the future," Rogers said in a statement.
In a telephone interview last night, Rogers said: "Jonathan Bowling was the kind of man that you would want as a son-in-law. He was just clean-cut."
Bowling, who had joined the Marine Reserve in 2000, was trained as a combat engineer. He was called to active duty last year and reported to the Marine Corps on June 1. The ambush yesterday occurred in Anbar province, the Associated Press reported.
After almost a year of dating, Bowling and Tonya McFarling had talked about marriage, her mother said, but Bowling had told his girlfriend that "he wanted to go and do his duty for his country." He "loved the Lord," Velma McFarling said, and he was a church elder.
A woman who answered the phone at the Bowling family home last night and said she was Jonathan Bowling's stepmother said the family was unable to be interviewed.
Bowling is survived by his father and his stepmother; his mother, Robin Feron; and twin sisters, Brooke Elizabeth Bowling and Ashley Blair Bowling, officials said.
