Sgt. Declan Coady of West Des Moines was killed on Sunday while serving in Operation Epic Fury, the Pentagon announced on Wednesday. The 20-year-old Army Reservist was one of six members of the Des Moines-based 103rd Sustainment Command killed on March 1, in Port Shuaiba, Kuwait, “during an unmanned aircraft system attack,” according to the Pentagon news release.
Capt. Cody A. Khork, 35, of Winter Haven, Florida; Sgt. 1st Class Noah L. Tietjens, 42, of Bellevue, Nebraska.; Sgt. 1st Class Nicole M. Amor, 39, of White Bear Lake, Minnesota, all of the 103rd, were also killed in the drone attack. The Pentagon has not yet released any information about the other two service members killed, or any of the injured.
The drone strike happened one day after the United States and Israel launched their combined attack on Iran.
“We pray for the full recovery of the wounded and send our immense love and eternal gratitude to the families of the fallen,” President Donald Trump said in a six-minute video posted online on Sunday. “And, sadly, there will likely be more before it ends. That’s the way it is. Likely be more.”
Declan Coady was a student at Drake University studying information systems, cybersecurity and computer science, and served in the reserves as an information technology specialist. He had been deployed to Kuwait for six months at the time of the attack. He was continuing his education while deployed by taking online classes.
Andrew Coady, Declan’s father, told the Associated Press that Declan said he was working long hours during his deployment, but he loved it. Last week, he told his family he had been recommended for a promotion from specialist to sergeant. Declan was given the promotion posthumously.
“He was going to be 21 in May, in two months,” his sister Keira Coady told the AP. She said that before he left for Kuwait, the family had been teasing Declan that he would reach the legal drinking age in a country that prohibits alcohol.
The Coady family was informed of Declan’s death at 8 p.m. on Sunday night, the New York Times reports.
“I still don’t really think it’s real,” Keria Coady told the AP. “I didn’t think it was real when they told us. Because I just remember all of our conversations about what he was going to do when he came back.”
Keira said she wished she could have told Declan that she loved him “one more time.”
“He was just so amazing.”
A GoFundMe page to raise money for “funeral and memorial expenses, travel costs, and other unexpected expenses” faced by the Coadys garnered nearly $60,000 in its first 24 hours.
The six service members killed in Kuwait are the only American deaths reported so far in Operation Epic Fury. According to the most recent information from the Red Crescent Society, Iran’s main humanitarian relief organization, 767 people have been killed in the country since the attack began early on Saturday morning, including 175 adults and children at a girls’ elementary school that was bombed on the first day.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who has styled himself the “Secretary of War,” briefly addressed the deaths of the U.S. service members in a press conference from the Pentagon Wednesday morning. He began by saying “America is winning decisively, devastatingly and without mercy” in the Middle East. “We are only four days into this and the results have been incredible. Historic, really.”
“Much was made of the volume of missiles Iran was able to shoot in the first few days. And, sadly, as we projected, a few got through and killed six of our best, who will hopefully arrive home soon. We will avenge them, no doubt,” Hegseth said. “But I liken Iran’s predicament to a football team who scripted the first 20 plays of a game. The team knew what plays to run because the first few drives were scripted. But now that the game has started and the blitz is on, they don’t know what plays to call, let alone how to get in the huddle and call those plays. Iran’s senior leaders are dead.”
He went on to brag about U.S. forces sinking an Iranian warship in international waters with a torpedo launched from a submarine, and allegedly hunting down and killing a would-be assassin of President Trump.
“We control their [Iran’s] fate. But when a few drones get through or tragic things happen, it’s front page news. I get it. The press only wants to make the president look bad. But try for once to report the reality.”
