While backpacking through eastern Europe, Ian “Frank” Tortorici met a girl and fell in love — both with the Ukrainian woman who would become his fiancée, and her home country.
But when Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, the former Marine from Lake Forest quit his job with the U.S Immigration and Customs Enforcement and flew to Kyiv, where he enlisted in the Ukrainian International Legion.
Trained as a paramedic, the Orange County native survived more than a year of battles from Irpin to Bakhmut. While on leave from the front, however, Tortorici, 32, was killed last week at a central Kramatorsk restaurant during a Russian missile attack, according to his family.
“He never got wounded. He never got hurt on any of the operations, with the exception of one concussion,” his father, Jon Frank, told the Southern California News Group in a phone interview on Tuesday, July 4. Then, “he was killed on leave eating in a restaurant by a Russian collaborator, who called in a (missile) strike.”
A U.S. State Department official confirmed the death late Tuesday “of a U.S. citizen in Kramatorsk, Ukraine.”
“We offer our sincerest condolences to the family on their loss and stand ready to provide all possible consular assistance,” the official said.
Numerous websites and social media posts also relayed news of Tortorici‘s death after a Los Angeles television station reported the story based on Frank’s Facebook post announcing Tortorici’s demise.
Tortorici is one of just a handful of U.S. veterans to have been killed in the Ukrainian war.
The Associated Press reported in May that at least nine American fighters had been killed in the war so far. Frank, a former Marine and a retired U.S. Marshal, believes there may be as many as 25 Americans killed in the war.
According to British news outlets, Russian S-300 missiles hit a crowded pizza restaurant in Kramatorsk on June 27, killing at least eleven people, including three children. The…
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