Kuwait Crash Kills Moreno Valley Marine

Mary Carriere answered a knock at her Moreno Valley home Thursday morning and saw three Marines and a chaplain standing in her doorway.

“I knew exactly why they were here,” said Carriere, 36, during a phone interview Monday. “I told them to sit down. I had to wake up my niece because I couldn’t do it alone.”

The chief warrant officer told her that her son, Lance Cpl. Jason Andrew Tetrault, had died July 9 in a car accident in Kuwait.

“I just screamed ‘No!’ ” she said. “Even though I knew why they were here, it was hard to hear.”

Tetrault, 20, was killed in a single-vehicle rollover accident, said Marine spokesman Capt. Shawn Turner. Other people in the vehicle suffered minor injuries, he said.

Tetrault’s family described him Monday as a popular Moreno Valley High School football player who had long been fascinated with the military and had joined the Marines for new challenges.

Tetrault decided he would join the Marines the summer before his senior year at Moreno Valley High, Carriere said.

She and her husband, Raymond, come from military families and supported his decision to enlist.

“I thought he was making a good decision,” she said. “We’ve always left that up to the kids, but we’ve also let them know that, as an American, you should serve your country if you’re able to.”

He enlisted June 2001, Turner said. He was assigned to the 7th Marine Regiment, 1st Marine Division, in Twentynine Palms.

Tetrault, who used his mother’s maiden name, was working on changing his last name to that of his step-father, Raymond, but had to put it off when he was deployed in January, said Carriere.

She said military officials had told her that Tetrault tried to pass another vehicle but lost control of the wheel and hit the brakes. The vehicle rolled over 10 times, she said, and Tetrault hit his head. “I was more scared about him having some stupid accident and coming home with a broken bone because he was a klutz,” she said.

The family expected him to return unharmed because he was serving as a computer programmer in Kuwait and was not on the front line.

During his weekly calls home, Tetrault had spoken fondly of his anticipated return home in August or September.

“He just said that when he got home he didn’t care if he never saw a grain of sand again; he was tired of seeing sand,” she said. “He said, ‘I can’t wait to come home to the good old U.S.A. and get normal.’ ”

Tetrault was already planning out his month of leave back in Moreno Valley. He wanted to go bungee jumping and skydiving and couldn’t wait to see the Pacific Ocean again, his mother said. He planned to spend a week at the beach and wanted to see family and friends again.

“He didn’t like having to sit; he liked to go, liked to play,” Carriere said. “He was just always on the move. He liked being outside.”

Tetrault planned to join the football team at the base in Twentynine Palms and to study computer programming in college. But his mother said he hadn’t been looking too far into the future.

“Jason was the type of person that didn’t make long-term plans,” she said. “His theory was: You never know what life is going to throw at you.”

His funeral is scheduled for Friday morning.