Va. Marine and Soldier Killed In Separate Incidents in Iraq

A soldier from Woodbridge who was one of four family members in Iraq was killed there Wednesday when his unit was attacked with grenades, officials and a family member said.

Army Pfc. Steven A. Davis, 23, was killed instantly during the attack in Baghdad, family members said last night.

They said his mother, Tess Davis, is working as a paramedic in Iraq. A grandfather, Rick Lara, is there as a mechanic. And Davis's younger brother, Christopher, is a soldier in Iraq, their father, Buck, an Army veteran, said.

A second Virginia man, Marine Lance Cpl. Jeremy L. Tinnel of Mechanicsville, was killed Sunday in a non-hostile boating accident in the Euphrates River, officials said. Tinnel, 20, and another Marine were the only ones on the boat when it capsized near the shore in Anbar province, Tinnel's wife, Angel, said. The accident is under investigation. Both were assigned to the 1st Battalion, 2nd Marine Regiment, 2nd Marine Expeditionary Force based at Camp Lejeune, N.C.

"I never thought it would happen to me," Angel Tinnel said of her husband's death, which she said occurred on her 22nd birthday. "I had pictured spending the rest of my life with him, and now that's all changed."

Six months ago, before Tinnel left for his second tour, they had wed in a small ceremony at his parents' house in Mechanicsville. Described by his wife as "a small-town guy," Tinnel enjoyed fishing, hunting and four-wheeling and was always clad in Wrangler jeans, a large belt buckle and a permanently mud-stained white T-shirt.

"He loved the outdoors; the outdoors were his life," Angel Tinnel said. "Anything to do with mud, he was not afraid of mud." Tinnel, who was home-schooled, had worked as a landscaper and had many aspirations, his wife said.

But first, she said, he thought he should join the military.

"He went into the Marines because he felt that any able-bodied man should go for two years, at least," she said. "That was part of living in the United States and having the freedoms of living in the United States."

Tinnel, said one of his old Marine comrades, George Flury, 22, "would be right there with you taking a bullet and giving one back. You wouldn't have to worry about being by yourself."

As Angel Tinnel prepared for her husband's funeral, she received two letters Tinnel had written to her in May, trying to reassure her.

As he always did, he wrote, "I can hold my own."