Somali Detail Fatal for Soldier : Accident: Pvt. Conner, 19, of Huntington Beach, was delivering water for Operation Restore Hope. He leaves a wife, 5-month-old son.

Upon completing basic training last summer at Ft. Leonard Wood, Mo., Pvt. David J. Conner had two choices for his specialty in the U.S. Army: upholstery or truck driving.

Conner, 19, chose to follow his father and half brother as a truck driver, even though he planned a career in architecture after finishing his military service.

“A truck driver can work anywhere,” explained Greg Sullivan, Conner’s half brother. “That’s what my dad used to tell us: ‘If you have your Class A license it’s a meal ticket all over the world.’ ”

Conner’s decision to step behind the wheel ultimately cost him his life.

Fatally hurt in a truck accident while taking water to troops in Somalia, the Orange County native is the fourth soldier to die during Operation Restore Hope. His is the first noncombatant fatality, and the only Army death since the mission began in December.

“It’s kind of still a shock,” said Conner’s wife, Tina, as she nursed their 5-month-old son, Brandon, Tuesday afternoon. “The other guys (Marines) were all starting to come home, so I figured he’d be next.”

Tina Conner said that because the Somalia mission was intended to feed starving people and not to fight a war, she had not prepared for her husband’s death.

“If he was going to war, yeah, but not over there,” she said. “It was just a car accident.”

Conner was on a resupply mission Feb. 7, toting huge tanks of water along a road that connects Mogadishu, Baidoa and Baledogle, when he encountered a pothole, Maj. Joseph Kintz said. When Conner swerved to avoid the hole in the road, the tanks shifted, causing the truck to flip twice.

Conner suffered head and back injuries and was left brain dead by the accident. He was removed from life-support systems at a Kenya hospital Monday night. We “were always preparing that my mom would go (but) we’d always thought that at least we’d have each other,” Sullivan said.

Born in Santa Ana and raised in a trailer behind his grandmother’s house, Conner was a cheerful child who loved sports. He began Cub Scouts at the youngest possible age and remained in the Boy Scouts “until they started teasing him in high school,” said his grandmother, Beatrice Conner.

Conner attended Newhope Elementary, where the flag hung at half-mast Tuesday, Steven R. Fitz Intermediate and Los Amigos High School. At Los Amigos, he earned varsity letters in football as a defensive end and baseball as a left fielder, and was graduated in 1991.

When Conner’s father, Paul, died of a heart attack in 1990, the family moved to an apartment in Huntington Beach, where Sullivan and Sheila Conner, Conner’s mother, still live.

“David had a lot of friends, he always had a smile on his face,” his mother said. “When anyone was in a sour mood, he’d make them laugh. He was a tease, a practical joker.”

Conner met his wife while they were both working at Sonic Burger in Westminster. On their first date, Tina Conner recalled, David stuck a red rose behind the sun visor in his car, then fibbed that she had something on her shirt, so the flower tumbled down as she checked the mirror.

“He always did everything for me,” Tina Conner said. Added Sheila Conner, “It was a love story that a lot of people would give anything for.”

After graduation, Conner worked part time running a ride at Knott’s Berry Farm and studied architecture at Golden West College. But when he was laid off at the amusement park after a few months, he could no longer afford to attend school. By May, 1992, he and Tina were married and expecting a baby, so he joined the Army.

“He wanted to make sure he could have a good life for his family,” Sullivan said. “You don’t think of how likely a war’s going to be, you don’t think one’s going to come up.”

Since enlisting last spring, Conner had spent little time with his family. He returned to California from his post in Fort Drum, N.Y., for a baby shower last summer and his son’s birth in September. He left for Somalia Dec. 28.

In his weekly letters to friends and relatives, Conner said he longed to return to the United States.

“They still haven’t given us a date to go home yet,” Conner wrote in his most recent note to his mother. “I wish they’d hurry up and give us an approximate date so that we have something to look forward to.”

In the letter, dated Jan. 22, Conner asks for a care package with “Doritos, cookies, candy, Kool-Aid and playing cards,” and describes his disdain for Operation Restore Hope.

“The only action is when the kids throw rocks at my truck and pound on it with sticks,” he wrote. “The people here are starting to turn against us, maybe because we just took over the country. To me, that just means we need to get the hell out of here.”

Conner’s body will be sent to Southern California in seven to 15 days and buried next to his father’s, Sheila Conner said. A friend of Conner’s from the Army will accompany the body, and there will be full military honors, including a 21-gun salute, during the funeral services at Crystal Cathedral in Garden Grove, officials said.

“David’s up there with his dad and his dad’s watching him,” Sheila Conner said Tuesday. “They (were) two peas in a pod.”

Recalling how her husband and two sons, rods in hand, would head for fishing expeditions saying to keep the skillet warm but always returned empty handed, Sheila Conner smiled as she comforted her daughter-in-law.

“I bet they’re fishing,” she said. “I bet they caught a big one up there.”