Army Sgt. Declan Coady.<\/span>Credit :\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n U.S. Army Reserve<\/p>\n The family of a 20-year-old American soldier killed this week\u00a0in the war with Iran\u00a0is remembering him as a \u201csmart and kind and amazing\u201d son and brother while sharing their heartbreak at not being able to speak with him even one last time.<\/p>\n Sgt. Declan J. Coady of West Des Moines, Iowa, was one of six Army reservists serving in Kuwait who were killed on Sunday, March 1, in an unmanned aircraft system \u2014 or drone \u2014 strike, according to the Pentagon.<\/p>\n The soldiers were in a command building at a port in Kuwait,\u00a0according to ABC News.<\/p>\n They were part of Operation Epic Fury, the name given to the joint U.S.-Israel offensive against Iran that triggered the war as part of what the U.S. says is an effort to topple a hostile regime and curb Iran\u2019s nuclear ambitions.<\/p>\n Now Coady\u2019s family is speaking out.<\/p>\n \u201cOn Sunday, March 1, after trying to check in, we heard nothing. Trying to be positive we all assumed he was just in a situation where he couldn\u2019t message back, but we all knew something was wrong,\u201d his sister, Kiera, said in the statement, according to\u00a0ABC News.<\/p>\n \u201cAt 8 p.m. as we all were getting ready to go to bed, the doorbell rang, and the rest of that night will forever be one of the worst nights of our lives. While it\u2019s all blurry, we all knew what the doorbell meant,\u201d she continued.<\/p>\n Coady, who enlisted in 2023, was Kiera\u2019s younger brother and only two months away from turning 21.<\/p>\n He died en route to the hospital after the drone attack and was posthumously promoted from specialist.<\/p>\n \u201cThe only thing I can think is that I wish I had called him one more time and told him I loved him,\u201d Kiera said in her statement. \u201cI wish that I had been able to be there or trade places with him or anything just so he could have known he was safe and that we loved him and he didn\u2019t need to be scared \u2026 He was just a baby.\u201d<\/p>\n When Coady\u2019s sister first received news of the drone strike, her instinct was to call him so he could tell her it wasn\u2019t true, she said: \u201cMaybe I would hear his voice telling us he was safe.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cBut there was nothing, not even a voicemail,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n \u201cI wish I could think of words beyond that he was smart and kind and amazing, but even if I were to throw in other words it still wouldn\u2019t quite capture his spirit,\u201d Kiera said. \u201cHe was truly a rock in all of our lives and was just the most amazing brother and son my family could have asked for.\u201d<\/p>\n The others who died in the strike have been identified by the Pentagon as Sgt. 1st Class Nicole M. Amor, a 39-year-old Army Reserve soldier and mother of two; Capt. Cody A. Khork, 35; and Sgt. 1st Class Noah L. Tietjens, 42.<\/p>\n The names of the two other killed service members have yet to be confirmed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Big Sister of 20-Year-Old Soldier Killed in Iran War Wishes She\u2019d \u2018Called Him One More Time and Told Him I Loved Him\u2019 \u201cHe was supposed to be… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":8466,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8465","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/grow48.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8465","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/grow48.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/grow48.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/grow48.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/grow48.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8465"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/grow48.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8465\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8467,"href":"https:\/\/grow48.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8465\/revisions\/8467"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/grow48.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/8466"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/grow48.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8465"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/grow48.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8465"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/grow48.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8465"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"US](\"https:\/\/www.newsday.com\/_next\/image?url=https%3A%2F%2Fcdn.newsday.com%2Fimage-service%2Fversion%2Fc%3AZWUyNTJiMmMtNGQ5ZC00%3AY2MzNzhiMGItNjhjYi00%2Fcopy-of-iran-us-military-deaths.jpeg%3Ff%3DLandscape%2B16%253A9%26w%3D770%26q%3D1&w=1920&q=80\")
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