Last Updated on July 14, 2017 by CCAR Staff
A staff sergeant from Ventura County was among the 16 servicemen identified Friday who died when the U.S. Marine aircraft they were flying in crashed in Mississippi earlier this week.
The crash occurred Monday when the plane went down into a soybean field, killing 16 people aboard and spreading debris for miles, the Associated Press reported. The KC-130, which is used as a refueling tanker, spiraled into the ground about 85 miles north of Jackson in the Mississippi Delta.
Three of the 16 servicemen on the plane were from Southern California: Sgt. Chad E. Jenson, 25, of Redondo Beach with the 2nd Marine Raider Battalion; Capt. Sean E. Elliott, 30, of Orange with the Marine Aerial Refueler Transport Squadron 452 and Staff Sgt. Robert H. Cox, 28, of Ventura, also with 2nd Raider Battalion.
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Eric Medina, of Tarzana, served with Cox and remembered his colleague as a respected peer.
“I had the pleasure of deploying with Robert Cox in Iraq, and later we met again at 3rd Anglico (in New Orleans),” Medina wrote on Facebook about Cox. “He was always the example of what a Marine should be and we all looked up to him and had the deepest of respect.”
Cox was stationed in North Carolina with the 2nd Marine Raider Battalion, an elite unit, according to the military. He listed his home as within the city of Ventura and had joined the Marines in 2007. Cox had been deployed overseas to the Middle East four times, including during Operation Iraqi Freedom.
The aircraft had taken off from the Marine Corps Air Station in Cherry Point, N.C., and was transporting the 15 Marines and one Navy Corpsman, plus equipment, from there to the Naval Air Field in El Centro, Calif. Equipment on board included various small arms ammunition and personal weapons, according to information from the U.S. Marines.
The 2nd Marine Raider Battalion is based at Camp Lejeune, N.C. Marine Aerial Refueler Transport Squadron 452 is based at the Stewart Air National Guard Base in Newburgh, N.Y.
