A single shot killed a Schofield Barracks soldier in Baghdad on Tuesday — a month after he told his mother how he had watched a bomb blow up two children and two Iraqi policemen, the soldier's father said yesterday.

The gunshot hit Pfc. Christopher A. McCraw in the abdomen below his armor, said McCraw's father, Avon McCraw, during a telephone interview from his home in Columbia, Miss.

McCraw's unit came under gunfire while they were on foot patrol in the Baghdad neighborhood of Nasar Wa Salam. He died less than an hour later at an Army hospital, his father said.

McCraw leaves behind a year-old son, Isaac Curtis McCraw, and a fiancee. Besides his parents, he also had two brothers and a sister.

He was assigned to the 1st Battalion, 21st Infantry Regiment, 2nd Brigade, 25th Infantry Division, out of Schofield Barracks.

An older brother, Sean, had previously been in Iraq and returned but is still struggling with post-traumatic stress disorder, the father said.

Avon McCraw said that more than a month ago Christopher McCraw had told his mother about a horrifying bomb explosion.

"He was so close that the blast threw him backward," Avon McCraw said. "The kids had come to them and said they saw the explosives being put in the ground. The (Iraqi) police went to check on them and the bomb blew up.

"He said that even if they could have put the bodies together they still couldn't have a funeral for them because someone would just walk into the funeral and try to blow everybody up. That's how it is over there."

The last Schofield soldier to die in combat was Sgt. Kenneth Gibson of Christiansburg, Va., on Aug. 10. Both McCraw and Gibson were with Schofield's Stryker brigade.

Avon McCraw called his son a "dedicated soldier who loved what he was doing." But he also had a lighter side.

"You know how guys like to show off with guns? He was like that," McCraw said. "He did a video of himself with his guns and sent it to his fiancee because he thought she'd get a kick out of it.

"I give the Army credit for giving him direction. Before he went in he was straying and we were all encouraging him to go into the military. If nothing else the Army helped him with that. He believed in what he was doing."

Sean McCraw, Christopher's older brother, is having a particularly difficult time since learning of his brother's death, their father said.

"Sean isn't taking it well," the father said. "He was here when the Army came to tell us about Christopher.

"He has had problems dealing with the stuff he saw when he was deployed. He's messed up right now, but we're working with him. It hasn't been easy, even before this. War and what you see affects everyone differently."

Avon McCraw said Christopher was scheduled to return to Mississippi on leave at the end of this month after having his February leave delayed.

"He couldn't wait to see his son," McCraw said. "He and his fiancee were going to get married as soon as he was out of Iraq."

On his www.myspace.com page, McCraw's profile has the quote: "For man hath no greater love than he that would lay down his own life for his friends."

Also on the page, which shows he last signed in on Tuesday, is a banner message saying, "Chris ready to come home and see my family."

McCraw joined the Army in February 2006 and went to basic training at Fort Benning, Ga. He was stationed at Schofield before being deployed to Iraq in December 2007, where he was stationed at Camp Liberty outside Baghdad.

McCraw is the 242nd military member with Hawai'i ties to have died in Iraq, Afghanistan or Kuwait since the invasion of Iraq in the spring of 2003.

As of Wednesday, 4,185 military personnel have died in the Iraq war, according to an Associated Press count.