A soldier from Tulsa killed in Iraq

Friday, May 7th 2004, 11:00 am

By: News On 6

Sad news from the home front, another Oklahoma soldier has been killed in Iraq. 19-year-old US Army specialist James Marshall was killed when his vehicle hit some kind of explosive device.

Marshall graduated from Tulsa's Central High School in 2002, where his favorite past time was playing saxophone in the school's marching band. The News on 6 talked to his mother Friday afternoon, who's preparing to face Mother's day without her only child. News on 6 reporter Steve Berg says she got the news early Thursday and she says it's just now beginning to sink in.

Pamela Marshall raised her son James by herself. She says it was just the two of them in their little house. And she says that's what she's going to miss the most, is knowing that he's in the next room. She says she last talked to him on the phone on Wednesday, just before he went out on his mission and he wanted to make sure she had gotten the flowers he sent her for Mother's Day. She got them a couple of hours after he called.

She says James had talked about joining the Army for years, and that he wanted to make a difference. "He's always wanted to prove that he could make something of himself. He was not going to end up like some of the kids out there on the streets, in the gangs and stuff like that, he did not want that."

Everybody says James had a happy, jovial personality and that he wanted to help people. His mom says during that last phone call, he was more worried about her than himself.