Services For Ill Soldier K-I-A In Afghanistan

Services will be this weekend for a southern Illinois soldier killed last week in Afghanistan.

Twenty-six-year-old Staff Sgt. Joshua Melton was from Germantown in Clinton County. The Illinois National Guard says he died along with 43-year-old Sgt. Paul Smith of East Peoria last Friday when their vehicle hit an improvised explosive device in Kandahar.

Melton enlisted in the National Guard in 2000 while still in high school in Breese.

Dustin Melton says his late brother was expected to return home in September to his wife and 16-month-old daughter.

Services will be at 10 a.m. Saturday at the St. Boniface Catholic Church in Germantown, followed by burial in St. Mary's Cemetery in Carlyle with full military honors.