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2007 Marine death recognized as casualty

More than a year after his death and three years after he was wounded, a reservist staff sergeant was formally recognized as a casualty of the Iraq war for the first time Wednesday.

Staff Sgt. Faoa L. Apineru, 31, of Yorba Linda, Calif., died July 2, 2007, from wounds sustained while supporting combat operations in Anbar, Iraq, Defense Department officials said. He was assigned to Headquarters Company, 23rd Marines.

Apineru was patrolling the northern border of Iraq on May 15, 2005, when he was hit by a roadside bomb, according to obituaries published when he died. The wounds he received to his head left him with traumatic brain injuries, post-traumatic stress disorder, extreme memory loss and frequent nightmares, and he had to re-learn how to drive and speak, the obituaries said.

Apineru died at the Veterans Affairs Palo Alto Health Care System Hospital in California, where obituaries said he was known as “the mayor” because of his kindness to others.

After his death, however, a medical examiner concluded that Apineru did not die from wounds sustained in the explosion.

Defense Department officials said Wednesday that in a second opinion, the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology “indicated that his death was a result of his injuries sustained in Iraq.” The statement did not specify how the decision was made, and officials could not be reached for comment.

In media reports released shortly after his death, family members did not specify what Apineru’s cause of death was, but attributed it to wounds he received in Iraq. A friend in the Corps told the San Francisco Chronicle shortly after his death that Apineru went to sleep the night he died and never woke up.

In a 2007 interview before he died, Apineru told the San Francisco Chronicle that he sometimes saw Iraqi insurgents when walking city streets in the U.S. after the explosion and suffered through the same recurring nightmare, which replayed the moment his Humvee was hit by a bomb.

“My nightmares are so real,” he said. “I can feel it, I can smell it.”