Eric D. Soufrine

Eric D. Soufrine

Battery B 4-42 Artillery

KIA 06/14/2011

A soldier from Woodbridge has been killed in Afghanistan, according to the Department of Defense.

Word of the death of Pvt. Eric D. Soufrine, 20, spread quickly through his hometown Wednesday night,
according to First Selectman Edward Maum Sheehy. He said Soufrine was a 2009 graduate of Amity High School
and enlisted in the Army after graduation.

"We are very saddened by his death," Sheehy said. "Something like this points out that freedom isn't free."

The Defense Department said Soufrine joined the Army on May 11, 2010, and was deployed to Afghanistan on Dec. 10.

Soufrine, who was stationed in Farah province in Afghanistan, was killed while on mounted patrol.
His vehicle hit a roadside bomb at a river crossing in the Shewan Garrison Village. Sheehy said that Soufrine, while overseas,
was recently honored in the town's Memorial Day ceremony.

He was a member of Battery B, 4th Battalion, 42d Field Artillery, out of Fort Carson, Colo.

Eric Soufrine with his sister Rebecca Soufrine. Pfc. Eric Soufrine from Woodbridge, Conn was killed in the line of duty
in Afghanistan on Tuesday June, 14, 2011.
Photo: Contributed Photo / Connecticut Post Contributed

A native of Woodbridge, CT, Eric Soufrine has died in Afghanistan. According to First Electman Eward Sheehy,
he said Soufrine was a 2009 graduate of Amity High School and enrolled in the Army after graduation. His date of enrollment
in the United States Army was on May 11th, 2010, following he was deployed to Afghanistan on December 10th, 2010.

While stationed in the Farah province in Afghanistan, Eric was killed while on mounted patrol. His vehicle hit an improvised explosive device
at a river crossing in the Shewan Garrison Village. He was a member of Battery B, 4th Battalion, 42d Field Artillery,
out of Fort Carson, Colorado. He also was a recipient of the National Defense service Medal and the NATO Service Medal.

CT’s Governor Dannel Malloy issued a statement Wednesday night, June 15th –

"The loss of Private First Class Soufrine is a tragedy and my thoughts are with his family and friends at this time.
The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have exacted a terrible toll on our military, our families and our communities.
Our prayers are with our men and women serving overseas and their families who are making an extraordinary sacrifice
in service to the country."

Continue reading on Examiner.com
by Maggie DellaRocco - Griffin

PVT Eric Soufrine's coffin is brought from the funeral home by the Honor Guard.

Photo by Mara Lavitt/newhavenregister.com

The Honor Guard fires a salute for PVT Eric Soufrine

Photo by Mara Lavitt/newhavenregister.com

Specialist Rebecca Soufrine leaves Mishkan Israel Cemetery in New Haven after the burial of her brother, Pfc. Eric Soufrine, on Sunday, June 19, 2011.
Pfc. Soufrine died in action in Afghanistan on Tuesday.

Photo: B.K. Angeletti / Connecticut Post

Soldier's death rocks Woodbridge at graduation time

Tim Loh and Monica Szakacs, Staff Writers

WOODBRIDGE -- After Sept. 11, 2001, when Amity Regional High School students began enlisting in the military more than ever before,
Associate Principal Marietta Mattei set up a glass display on the wall outside the main office.

In went photographs of as many graduates who were serving active duty as she could find out about.

After students emptied the building Friday for one of the final times of the school year, she stood before the display window,
which she has managed for nearly a decade. Twenty-five uniformed graduates stared back from pictures.

"We had never had a casualty," she said.

Then came Tuesday.

This week, finals started.

On Tuesday, the seniors, just eight days from graduating, were predictably rowdy, staff in the front office said.
Then, about 11 a.m., Paige Woodward, a 17-year-old senior who was sitting in her digital video class, was called into the hallway.

"They called me out and told me," she said.

Her boyfriend, Army Pfc. Eric Soufrine, 20, had been killed by an improvised explosive device.

Her mother picked her up from school and brought her home.

At her graduation next week, they'll hold a moment of silence for her boyfriend.

Soufrine graduated from Amity in 2009. In the yearbook, beside his senior year picture, he left a quote from the Led Zeppelin song
"Stairway to Heaven."

"There are two paths you can go by," it said, "but in the long run there's still time to change the road you're on."

That summer, Mike Vernik, one of his best friends since middle school, first learned that Soufrine intended to join the military.
It came as no surprise, he says.

Soufrine was an outdoors guy. He loved hunting. He loved guns. He loved fishing, boating, water-skiing, rope swings.
He went hunting with his father and together they traveled to compete in skeet-shooting contests.

Vernik and Soufrine spent their high school summers working at the Woodbridge Country Club. They maintained the greens
and the lawns of the golf course. When work ended in the afternoon, they would head to Vernik's home or Soufrine's home --
a large property, with ample woods and open space -- or to that of another friend. They hunted or hiked or went fishing or boating.

Soufrine's older cousin was in the military.

"That may have played a factor in it," Vernik says of Soufrine's decision. "He was really set on protecting his country."

He was also set on protecting his friends and family, Vernik says.

"He knew of the dangers," Vernik says. "It was, `This is what I want to do. But I don't want you guys to do it.'"

Even so, Rebecca, Soufrine's 25-year-old sister, followed his steps into the Army.

Before he left for Afghanistan, she recalls, he gave her a package of letters and Post-it notes and said not to open it
until she got to basic training.

When she got there, she found notes inside that said, "You're the best sister ever," she recalled on Friday, and also,
"I love you so much."

Rebecca, who's done with basic training now, was at home in Woodbridge on Friday. The family, she said, had been planning
a big party for her brother's return. He had wanted to go to college at some point.

Her greatest memories involve the times they'd spent together on their motor boat -- waterskiing, tubing, fishing.
He loved to drive the boat, she said. He loved the summer.

Soufrine's parents did not wish to speak for this report.

Woodward counts one night last August at a hibachi restaurant as the start of their relationship.

Soufrine couldn't figure out how to use the chopsticks, she says, so she tried to show him. That didn't work and she recalls him getting mad.

At the time, Woodward had an injured knee. She recalls him picking her up and carrying her around on piggyback.
He tried to teach her how to drive, and that didn't work either. "It was a disaster," she recalls

She last saw him in November. On the final night, he came over to her house and they spoke in her driveway and he cried, she says.
He said he'd never cried in front of anyone before. He'd told his friends that he loved her and that he was going to marry her, she says.

"I think I was the only person that saw his sensitive side," she says.

She gave him a letter and a picture of herself, which she says he kept with him in Afghanistan. In return,
she would wear his sweatshirts -- his Yankees sweatshirt and his Amity lacrosse one -- to bed.

He offered her some parting words.

"Enjoy your senior year," she recalls him saying. "I'll be back before you know it."

His deployment was to end in two weeks, Vernik said. After time on base at Fort Carson, Colo.,
he would have returned to Connecticut in early August.

On Friday morning at Amity, Mattei, the associate vice principal, stepped into the hallway, slid open the glass display case,
and took down the 5-by-7 inch photograph of Soufrine.

She went to her computer, blew up the picture and brought it back to the display case. She placed it on top of black paper
Then she bordered the picture with American flag ribbons.

Then she pasted on top: "Killed in Action. Afghanistan, June 2011."

Reach Tim Loh at tloh@ctpost.com or 203-330-6377. Follow at twitter.com/timloh.

Read more: http://www.ctpost.com/local/article/Soldier-s-death-rocks-Woodbridge-at-graduation-1429429.php#ixzz1PpuD8B23

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