A 25-year-old Fort Richardson soldier from West Virginia, Spc. Julian Berisford, was killed in eastern Afghanistan Wednesday when his platoon came under fire while on patrol.

The infantryman was married and had a daughter about to celebrate her first birthday. The online edition of the Intelligencer of Wheeling, W.Va., said Berisford had scheduled his two-week leave for next week so he could be home for the party.

Now his family and friends are mourning his death.

"It's like our heart has been torn out," Berisford's cousin, Randi Jo Chavanak, said. "The only thing he said before he left was that he was going to do things right for families like ours. He was going to fight for families."

According to a prepared statement from Fort Richardson, Berisford joined the Army in August 2007 and initially served at bases in the South. Twelve months later, he was a paratrooper assigned to the 4th Brigade Combat Team (Airborne) at Fort Richardson. He deployed to Paktika province in March with C Company of one the brigade's battalions, the 3-509th Parachute Infantry Regiment.

The Army said he was killed by a rocket-propelled grenade and small-arms fire in Paktika's Bermal District, a Pashto-speaking region with a long border with Pakistan.

Berisford was the 12th soldier of the brigade to die in combat since it began its deployment in February. His battalion lost two soldiers July 4 when Taliban forces attacked their mountain fortress