Galesburg airman killed while in Iraq

By The Associated Press | Tuesday, January 09, 2007

GALESBURG, Ill. (AP) — A central Illinois soldier who served on an Air Force bomb squad that scoured Iraq for explosives was killed when a roadside bomb exploded south of Baghdad, his father said Monday.

Senior Airman Daniel B. Miller Jr., 24, hoped his military work with explosives would someday land him on a bomb squad with a metropolitan police department, said his father, Daniel B. Miller, of Galesburg.

“He knew the risk, but he said you just have to live life,” his father said. “If you have to go, he said he didn’t mind going that way — ‘going with his boots on,’ is what he said.”

The elder Miller said he was told his son was among three airmen with the 447th Expeditionary Civil Engineer Squadron’s explosive ordnance division who were killed Sunday in the blast in Al-Mahmudiyah.

The Department of Defense said Monday that Senior Airman Elizabeth A. Loncki, 23, of New Castle, Del.,  and Technical Sgt. Timothy Weiner, 35, of Tamarac, Fla., also were killed. Another soldier was injured, according to the department.

Miller, who joined the Air Force in 2004, was scheduled to come home this month after spending six months in Iraq, his father said.

“That doesn’t make it harder, really. I don’t know if anything could make it harder,” his father said.

The elder Miller said he isn’t sure what spurred his son’s interest in joining the bomb squad, which was sometimes the target of snipers during its half-dozen or more daily missions in Iraq.

There was a moment of silence Monday morning at ROWVA High School in Oneida, about 10 miles northeast of Galesburg, where Miller played football before graduating in 2001.