Projo 7 to 7 News Blog

SEEKONK, Mass. -- Seekonk's post office will be renamed Sunday after the late Marine Lance Cpl. Eric Paul Valdepeñas, who was killed in Fallujah, Iraq, while in active duty in September 2006.

The dedication ceremony will be at 2 p.m. at the post office, 156 Taunton Ave.

The lone survivor of the attack that killed Valdepeñas, Marine Lance Cpl. Cody Hill of Ada, Okla., will speak at the ceremony.

Valdepeñas, an honor student and accomplished lacrosse player at Bishop Hendricken High School, put his studies on hold at the College of Engineering at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst when his reserve unit was activated in December 2005. He had one month left to complete his tour.

A trained machine gunner, Valdepeñas was on patrol in a Victor 5 Humvee when a bomb exploded, killing Valdepeñas, Navy Corpsman Christopher Walsh, 30, an emergency medic from St. Louis; and Corporal Jared Shoemaker, 29, a policeman from Tulsa.

Valdepeñas, Walsh, Shoemaker, and Hill had been helping an infant girl who was born with a defect that caused her bladder to grow outside her body. After returning from Iraq, some men from the 1st Battalion of the 25th Marines completed the mission of mercy sending Baby Mariam to Massachusetts for the surgery that saved her life.

 Tags  Eric Valdepeñas Seekonk Mass

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