Soldier With Bend Ties Killed By IED In Iraq

A 24-year-old Army corporal who grew up in Lakeview and attended Central Oregon Community College in Bend has been killed in Iraq, the Department of Defense announced late Monday.

Cpl. Jessica A. Ellis died Sunday in Baghdad “of wounds suffered when her vehicle encountered an improvised explosive device,” the news release said, giving her hometown as Bend.

Ellis was assigned to the 2nd Brigade special Troops Battalion, 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 101st Airborne Division (Air Assault) out of Fort Campbell, Kentucky, officials said.

Ellis, serving asan Army medic,was a 2002 graduate of Lakeview High School. The (Klamath Falls) Herald and News reported that shelettered in track and cross country and was on the school’s swim team.

The newspaper reported that her parents are Steve and Linda Ellis, and her father formerly worked as the district manager for the Bureau of Land Management’s district office in Lakeview. He’s currently supervisor of the Wallowa-Whitman National Forest in northeast Oregon.

COCC and BLM officials confirmed that Ellis attended COCC until the spring of 2004,majoring in education, before entering the Army that fall.

Stunned staff at Lakeview High recalled Ellis with sadness Tuesday.

“Ithink she had a deep desire to help people. I would imagine that’s why she chose to be a medic in the armed forces,” said Principal Bob Nash.

Lakeview High’s principal says she brightened the halls of the school.

“Several of the teachers andI were talking about it this morning,” Nash said. “She would literally light up a room. She always had a smile on her face. She got along with just an amazing array of people both adults and kids.”

Ellisreceived nearly a dozen awards and decorations during her time in the Army.

Her high school’s principal says her hometown is heartbroken.

“Obviously we’re a small town, and we’re very tightknit here,” Nash said. ” The faculty and community members that remember her and her family are devastated by this.”

According to Oregon Gov. Ted Kulongoski’s office, Ellis is the 105th Oregon service member to die while serving in Operation Enduring Freedom and the War In Iraq.

Ellis is the fifth Central Oregonian killed in the war in the past two years, the first female soldier from Central Oregon to be killed in the conflict, and the 59th Oregonian in the Army to have died in the war, according to the governor’s list of “Oregon’s Most Honorable.”

Elliis also isthe third Oregon soldier to die in the war so far this year – and one of the othersalso was a Bend resident, Army Sgt. Zachary McBride, 20, a June 2005 graduate of Mountain View High School. He wasone of six soldiers killed Jan. 9 when an IED blew up at a home in Sinsil, Iraq.

In April 2007, Marine Lance Cpl. Dale Peterson, a Burns native and Redmond High graduate, was killed by an improvised explosive device.

In August 2006, Marine Lance Cpl. Randy Lee Newman of Bend, a 2003 Mtn. View graduate, was killed in Al Anbar Province when an IED hit his light armored vehicle.

In June 2006, Army Pfc. Thomas Tucker of Madras was killed after he and a fellow soldier were abducted at a checkpoint during a clash with insurgents.

Nearly 4,100 American military personnel have died in Iraq since the war began.

Two other civilians with ties to Central Oregon also have died in Iraq and Afghanistan since 2004.

Sunriver resident Deborah Klecker, 51, who worked for a Texas company, died in June 2005 after a roadside bomb exploded near her vehicle in Iraq. She was there to help train the country’s fledgling police force.

In November 2004, Loren “Butch” Hammer, 35, a Redmond High graduate who earned his pilot’s license from Butler Aircraft, died when his transport plane crashed in Afghanistan.