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FORT CAMPBELL, Ky. (AP) -- A Utah native 101st Airborne Division soldier who had been scheduled to leave the Army last winter until his service time was extended was killed Tuesday by a roadside bomb in Iraq, the Army said.
Spc. Ty J. Johnson, 28, of Elk Grove, Calif., died in Kirkuk when an improvised device exploded near the Humvee he was riding in. Johnson was assigned to the 2nd Battalion, 320th Field Artillery Regiment, 1st Brigade Combat Team.
Johnson entered the Army three years ago and arrived at Fort Campbell a few months later, the post said in a statement Wednesday night.
The deployment was Johnson's second to Iraq. His wife, Corinne Johnson, told The Leaf-Chronicle of Clarksville, Tenn., that he would have gotten out in January but the Army extended his service with a "stop loss" requiring him to remain.
Corinne Johnson was visiting her mother-in-law in Elk Grove when someone came to the door Tuesday afternoon with the news Johnson had been killed.
"I'd received an e-mail from him the night before," she said. "He always liked to talk to me before he'd go out on missions. "It made him feel better. He said he'd be back late that night. He never got to read my e-mail before he died."
Johnson's father, Johnny Johnson of West Jordan, Utah, said his son loved his family and his country. He said his son grew up in Sandy, Utah, and attended Jordan High School.
"I had sent him a little Tonka Truck because he loved Hot Wheels (toy cars)," Johnny Johnson told the newspaper. "The last e-mail I got from him, he was saying he gave it to one of the kids in Iraq. He loved the kids over there."
Corinne Johnson said her husband helped carry ballots for the first election in Iraq and she felt he would go down in history as someone who had a purpose in fighting the war.
Besides his wife and father, Johnson is survived by a daughter, Kyrstin, and son, Rand, of Fort Campbell; and his mother, Lisarae Johnson of Elk Grove.
Johnson is the 137th member of the Fort Campbell-based 101st Airborne to be killed in Iraq since the war began. The sprawling base straddles the Kentucky-Tennessee border.
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Information from: The Leaf-Chronicle, http://www.theleafchronicle.com
(Copyright 2006 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)
