Marine veteran killed by ISIS militants while fighting the terrorist group in Syria

A former Marine who secretly traveled to Syria earlier this year to battle the Islamic State was killed while fighting for a Kurdish militia, his father said Tuesday.

David Taylor Sr. told The Associated Press that his 25-year-old son, David Taylor, told only a high school friend about his plans to join the Kurdish group, and he swore his friend to secrecy. Taylor’s father said he didn’t even know of his son’s plans until after he had arrived in Syria and was training with the group known as YPG.

“I got an email and he said, ‘Pops, don’t worry. I’m with the YPG,’” David Taylor Sr. said in a telephone interview from his home in West Virginia. “He said, ‘I’m doing the right thing. It’s for their freedom.‘”

A Kurdish militia group released a video saying Taylor was killed on July 16. The U.S. State Department said in a statement that it was aware of reports of a U.S. citizen being killed while fighting in Syria but offered no further comment. Taylor Sr. said a U.S. consular chief from the Kurdistan Region in Iraq informed him of his son’s death.

Taylor’s high school friend emailed the father after he learned of the death. The friend said Taylor told him during a visit to St. Petersburg Beach, Florida, last February that Taylor believed the Islamic State group needed to be stopped.

“One night he got drunk and told me of the atrocities he had witnessed in the Middle East during his time in the Marine Corps,” the friend, Alex Cintron, wrote in an email to Taylor’s parents.

Taylor’s father shared the email with AP on Tuesday.

“He said to the effect that ‘Isis was the bane of modern existence and needed to be stopped before they destroy any more lives and priceless works of human achievement,‘” Cintron said in the email.

Source: AA