
NORMAN, Okla. — Karen Gould knew the news was bad when two Marine officers visited the beauty salon where she works March 2.
“I looked at them and I looked at my boss and I just kind of went sick,” said Gould, who was told her son, Staff Sgt. Dustin Michael Gould, a bomb technician, had been killed in Iraq. “He was disarming [a bomb] to save his whole platoon, and he took the fall for it. So he saved the others.”
Gould, 28, was scheduled to return home in April. Recently, his half-brother, who was in the Army, was killed by a sniper in Iraq.
Gould told his mother that military casualty officers would break the news in person.
“He was very proud...