Number 86

Lawrence is a small county deep in the heart of Kentucky's coal country. I wonder if the mountains of the Afghanistan/Pakistan border reminded First Sergeant Matthew Sluss-Tiller of home.

A soldier from Lawrence County was among the casualties in a roadside bomb in Pakistan on Wednesday.

Matthew Sluss-Tiller, a 1993 graduate of Lawrence County High School, was one of three American troops who died in the blast, which occurred outside a girls’ school near in northwestern Pakistan. Three students also died in the blast.

Various news organizations reported that Sluss-Tiller and his fellow soldiers were part of a small unit that trains Pakistani Frontier Troops responsible for security near the country’s border with Afghanistan. Their deaths were the first known U.S. military fatalities in Pakistan’s lawless tribal regions near the Afghan border.

Journalists traveling with the American convoy said the blast hit the vehicle in which the soldiers were riding, an indication that the soldiers were targeted.

The 35-year-old was married to his high-school sweetheart, and had a three-year-old daughter.