Tampa soldier dies in Afghanistan attack that claimed 6

Tampa soldier dies in Afghanistan attack that claimed 6
By Marlene Sokol and Robbyn Mitchell
Times Staff Writers
Wednesday, July 11, 2012

TAMPA — It was 6:15 Monday morning and Ignacia Seija was getting ready for her job as an airport custodian.

Her two dogs started barking. Her husband saw two men in military uniforms approaching their West Tampa home.

"When I saw those two men, I knew it wasn't anything good," Ignacia Seija said in Spanish. "I knew my son had died."

Her son, Army Staff Sgt. Ricardo Seija, 31, was killed Sunday in a roadside bombing in Afghanistan.

It was the same attack, a family member said, that had killed Army Sgt. Clarence Williams III, 23, of Brooksville and four other Americans. They were riding in an armored vehicle in Wardak province, just south of Kabul, when an improvised explosive device went off.

The knock on the door of the West Tampa home was the second visit military officers had made early Monday to deliver grim news. At 5 a.m., officers told the Williams family that their son, a 2008 Hernando High grad who hoped to someday become a Florida Highway Patrol trooper, had died in the attack.

Williams and Seija became the 27th and 28th Tampa Bay area service members to have died in Afghanistan.
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