2 Minnesota soldiers serving in Iraq killed by explosives

12/04/2006

Two Minnesota soldiers were killed in Iraq over the weekend, including a 22-year-old from Maplewood who died Saturday in Fallujah in an explosion, the man's father confirmed Sunday night.


Tom Ford,
Star Tribune
Last update: December 04, 2006 – 12:12 AM


Two Minnesota soldiers were killed in Iraq over the weekend, including a 22-year-old from Maplewood who died Saturday in Fallujah in an explosion, the man's father confirmed Sunday night.


The family of Bryan T. McDonough, a specialist with the Minnesota National Guard, learned of his death Sunday morning, said his father, Thomas McDonough.


The 2002 graduate of Roseville High School was deployed to Iraq in March.


The other Minnesotan killed was Cory Rystad, 20, of Red Lake Falls, who was a member of a National Guard unit from the Crookston and Thief River Falls areas, the Grand Forks (N.D.) Herald reported. He joined immediately after he graduated from high school in 2004.


McDonough, who had been taking classes at St. Cloud Technical College before his deployment, wrote about his war experience on MySpace.com:


"This is definitely not the most glorious place in the world, but there's no other place I would rather be. Putting everything on the line to defend my country is something I wanted to do."


As part of the same MySpace.com entry, he also wrote: "When I get out of the sandbox, I will be going back to college; hopefully I can finish it up before Uncle Sam has another mission for us."


His father declined to comment further Sunday night.


Rystad's family had not been told exactly what happened to him as of Sunday night, but they believed he was killed by an improvised explosive device, the newspaper reported.


"It happened yesterday, but we weren't notified until this morning," his brother, David Rystad, said.


The two were the 46th and 47th people with Minnesota ties to die in the Middle East during the Iraq war.