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SALT LAKE CITY (AP) -- A U.S. soldier from Layton died Wednesday in Iraq of a "non-combat related injury," the second Utah soldier to die this month, the Department of Defense said.
Spc. David J. Goldberg, 20, died in Qayyarah, Iraq. No other details of the death were immediately released.
"We don't know if it's firearms related or a road accident, all we know it's under investigation," his father, Chuck Goldberg said.
He had been in the service almost two years, and told his parents before he was deployed that it was his duty to be in Iraq.
"I need to go," his mother, Dolly Goldberg, said of the conversation. "It's my responsibility as an American citizen to be out there."
The Goldbergs last spoke with their oldest of three children Tuesday.
"We hate to see him go from this Earth, but as long as we have that assurance that he's in heaven and is enjoying eternal life, I'd trade all the years for that," Chuck Goldberg said.
His wife added, "I'm just thankful God allowed me to have him for 20 years."
Goldberg was assigned to C Company, 52nd Engineer Combat Battalion of the U.S. Army Reserve's 43rd Area Support Group in Fort Carson, Colo.
Goldberg was one of nearly 600 soldiers sent to Iraq with the engineering unit, which has been doing construction work.
Funeral services also were held Wednesday for another Utah solider killed in Iraq. Capt. Nathan S. Dalley, of Kaysville, was killed Nov. 17 in Baghdad by what the Pentagon described as a non-hostile gunshot wound.
Two other Utah soldiers died during the war in Iraq.
James W. Cawley, 41, a Salt Lake police officer and Marine reservist, was killed in a firefight near Nasiriyah in late March, nine days into the war. Staff Sgt. Nino D. Livaudais, 23, died in April in a suicide bombing at a U.S. checkpoint in northwestern Iraq.
(Copyright 2003 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)
