Update: Body of Pawtucket Marine returns to R.I.

Published Feb. 24, 2010 at 8:40 p.m.

Providence Journal / Bob Breidenbach
Family members greet the casket holding the body of Pfc. Kyle Coutu as fellow Marines remove it from a small private jet this afternoon at Green Airport...

WARWICK, R.I. -- About 45 people stood in the rain to welcome home the body of a Pawtucket Marine killed last Wednesday during combat operations in Afghanistan, which returned to Rhode Island this afternoon.

Pfc. Kyle J. Coutu, 20, of Pawtucket, died in Helmand Province, the scene of a big push by the U.S. military against the Taliban.

Coutu's body returned to Green Airport in Warwick on a chartered plane that landed just before 2 p.m. A hearse backed up to the plane. An honor guard of at least 30 police officers and military personnel marched to the plane and stood at attention as Coutu's mother, fiance and other relatives walked from waiting limousines. The casket, covered with a U.S. flag protected by a plastic sheet, was lowered to the tarmac.

Among those watching in solemn silence behind a gate were friends of Coutu from high school, his and his mother's former landlady, and Dorothy Furlong, a woman who shares a house with Coutu's mother, Melissa A. Coutu, while both their sons were serving in the military. Furlong's son is in the Navy, she said after the motorcade left, on the Eisenhower in the Arabian Sea.

"On the 17th of February, God asked for a hero and Kyle took the call, because he wanted to serve his country, from when he was 4," Furlong said.

The hearse, escorted by police from Pawtucket, Cranston and Warwick, as well as the Rhode Island State Police and two members of the Patriot Guard Riders on motorcycles, two vans of Marines and two limousines carrying family members, took the body to a Pawtucket funeral home.

Coutu is to be buried on Friday, and flags are to fly at half-staff in Rhode Island until then.

Visiting hours are 3 to 8 p.m. Thursday at The William W. Tripp Funeral Home, 1008 Newport Ave., Pawtucket. A Mass of Christian Burial will start at 11 a.m. Friday at St. Theresa's Church, 358 Newport Ave., Pawtucket, with interment at the Rhode Island Veterans Memorial Cemetery in Exeter, a funeral spokeswoman said.

The family suggests that in lieu of flowers, family and friends might consider the adopt a soldier program or make a donation to the Wounded Warrier Regiment by sending a check payable to the Department of Navy Gift Fund, in care of Charitable Donations Coordinator, 3025 John Quick Rd., MCB Quantico, VA 22134. In the memo portion of the check, note that it's for Wounded Warrier Battalion East.

View a Facebook tribute page for Kyle Coutu.

This story was first posted at 1:44 p.m. and updated at 1:57 and 2:05 p.m.

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