MINNESOTA, MINNEAPOLIS: A Minnesota soldier was killed in a drone attack in Kuwait just days before she was set to return home to her family, the US Department of Defense announced Tuesday, March 3.
Sgt 1st Class Nicole M Amor, 39, of White Bear Lake, died Sunday in Port Shuaiba during an unmanned aircraft system strike, cutting short a deployment that was nearing its end. Her husband, Joey Amor, said she was preparing to reunite with him and their two children.
Nicole Amor’s husband spoke to her two hours before the attack
“She was almost home,” Joey Amor said from the family’s Minnesota residence. “You don’t go to Kuwait thinking something’s going to happen, and for her to be one of the first – it hurts.”
Joey Amor said the military moved his wife off base a week before the drone strike, placing her in a shipping container-style building without defensive protections.
“They were dispersing,” he said. “Because they were in fear that the base they were on was going to get attacked and they felt it was safer in smaller groups in separate places.”
He spoke with her for the last time about two hours before the attack. She had been working long shifts, and they had exchanged messages about a fall she took the night before.
“She just never responded in the morning,” he said.
The couple has two children, a high school senior and a fourth-grader. Amor served in the 103rd Sustainment Command in Des Moines, Iowa. She joined the National Guard in 2005 as a logistics specialist and moved to the US Army Reserve in 2006.