SPOKANE -- A Spokane man who was serving with the US Army as a combat engineer in Iraq was killed by an IED strike on August 26th, family members report.

Specialist Carlo Alfonso of Alpha Company, 40th Engineer Battalion, based at Baumholder, Germany was killed by an IED which critically wounded one of his fellow soldiers, his wife said in an e-mail Friday afternoon.

"I am so thankful to them and the Army for being their through this," Rosemarie said of her husband's fellow soldiers.

Alfonso came to the United States in 1997 with his mother. He met his wife Rosemarie in high school. They dated, later married and now have a two-year-old son Kyle Alfonso.

Alfonso joined the Army and while he wasn't a U.S. citizen yet he "was proud to be a soldier and to serve for this country and thanks to the military he will become one very soon."

Funeral arrangements are pending, though it's reported he will be returning home to Spokane on September 4th, his birthday.

"His time here on Earth was full of love and we will go on loving him," Rosemarie said.

Alfonso is the second soldier from the Germany-based 40th Engineers killed in action in the last month.

Sergeant James McHale from the battalion's Company B, was taken off life support in a Maryland hospital in late July after he was critically wounded in a July 22nd IED strike during a route clearance mission in Iraq.

McHale was from Fairfield, Montana.