By Anthony Ramirez, The New York Times
A New York City police officer serving as a soldier in Iraq was severely injured this week when a roadside bomb near Baghdad exploded and tore apart the Humvee he was riding in, the press secretary for a Staten Island congressman said yesterday.
“There was a bomb in the road that exploded and they drove over it, and the Humvee was ripped to shreds,” said Craig Donner, press secretary for Representative Vito Fossella, a Republican. The congressman’s staff has been helping the soldier’s family obtain information, which has not been immediately available from the Pentagon.
The soldier, Staff Sgt. Jonathan Herbst, 24, suffered a concussion and multiple injuries to his torso. The most serious injury was to an arm and wrist, which will require extensive surgery, said family members who had spoken to him by telephone. Two other soldiers riding in the vehicle were killed.
Other details about the explosion were not available. It was not immediately clear whether the Humvee was armored.
Sergeant Herbst joined the Police Department in July 2003 and was stationed in Iraq after training as an Army Ranger sniper this summer.
His mother said she was stunned that her son was hurt. “Jonathan has perfect accuracy for aiming,” Paula Herbst said, “so in my mind I thought there wasn’t anybody who could catch him.”
Sergeant Herbst was assigned to the Army National Guard’s First Battalion, 101st Cavalry Division, based at Manor Road Armory on Staten Island. He graduated from New Dorp High School in 1998, and his family lives in the Dongan Hills neighborhood of Staten Island.
Mrs. Herbst talked to her son yesterday morning on a secure telephone line from a hospital in Iraq. “I heard his voice this morning and he spoke very briefly to me,” Mrs. Herbst said. “He said they were medevacking him and a group of other people” to Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany.
“Then he said he was going back to the field so he could get those blankety-blank bastards” who killed his friends, Mrs. Herbst recalled. She said she was shocked because “he usually doesn’t talk that way to me.”
She then gently reproached her son by saying: “Oh no, you’re not. You’re going to recover.”
Despite her worries, Mrs. Herbst said, her son sounded far more lucid yesterday than he did on Wednesday when he telephoned his girlfriend and family members.
“He was terrible on Wednesday,” Mrs. Herbst said. “I could hear the sergeant at the medical unit” in Iraq “say, ‘Jon, wake up! Wake up, Jon! Your mom needs to hear your voice!’ It was terrible. Obviously he was on painkillers.”
Sergeant Herbst’s sister, Christiane Herbst, 26, said her brother talked first with their grandfather, Ben Lobaito, who helped raise him. “Pop,” she said he told their grandfather on Wednesday morning, “I’m in trouble. Something happened. I lost two of my men.”
His sister grew even more concerned when she heard what Sergeant Herbst had said in a telephone call, also on Wednesday, to his girlfriend, Stephanie Perri, a New York City police officer.
“He kept saying, ‘Stephanie, come and pick me up,’ ” Ms. Herbst said.
And Ms. Herbst said her brother seemed to be disoriented and apologetic that he missed her birthday on Wednesday. She just chided him for being silly.
“Hearing from him was the greatest birthday present!” she said.