One of the US soldiers killed by an Iranian drone strike in Kuwait was just days away from returning home to her husband and two children, her heartbroken family has revealed.
Sgt. 1st Class Nicole Amor, a 39-year-old mom from White Bear Lake, Minn., was excited to return to her family before she became one of six killed in the Iranian attack on Port Shuaiba on Sunday.
“She was almost home,” her grief-stricken husband, Joey Amor, said Tuesday.
“You don’t go to Kuwait thinking something’s going to happen, and for her to be one of the first – it hurts.”
The grieving husband said he spoke to Amor just hours before the deadly drone strike as they traded texts about how she had tripped and fallen the night before.
“She just never responded in the morning,” he said.
Amor, who was assigned to the Army Reserve’s 103rd Sustainment Command, had enlisted in the National Guard as an automated logistics specialist in 2005 and transferred to the Army Reserve in 2006.
She had previously deployed to Kuwait and Iraq.
Back on home soil, Amor was an avid gardener who loved making homemade salsa with veggies from her garden with her son, a senior in high school.
She also enjoyed rollerblading and bicycling with her fourth-grade daughter, according to her family.
In the Army Reserve, Amor and her fellow soldiers worked in logistics and kept troops supplied with food and equipment.
She and the others were killed just one day after the US and Israel launched the Operation Epic Fury strikes against Iran.
A week before the attack, Amor had been moved off-base to a shipping container-style building that had no defenses, according to her husband.
“They were dispersing because they were in fear that the base they were on was going to get attacked and they felt it was safer in smaller groups in separate places,” he said.
Those killed alongside her included Capt. Cody Khork, 35, of Winter Haven, Florida; Sgt. 1st Class Noah Tietjens, 42, of Bellevue, Nebraska; and Sgt. Declan Coady, 20, of West Des Moines, lowa.
The other two names haven’t yet been released by the Pentagon.
With Post wires