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Double tragedy

Our thoughts and prayers go out to Staff Sgt. Richardson’s loved ones:

An Alabama soldier home on emergency leave from Afghanistan for his father’s funeral was killed in a wreck Monday night near Evergreen. Army Staff Sgt. Derrick Eugene Richardson died when his vehicle overturned multiple times about two miles south of Evergreen just before 9 p.m. on Conecuh County Road 29.

Richardson was stationed at Fort Hood, Texas.

His sister, Shirley Dukes, said Tuesday that her brother had come home from Afghanistan to attend the funeral of his father, Willie Earl Travis.

“I loved him,” Dukes said of her brother during a telephone interview from a relative’s home, where many family members had gathered. “He was the most wonderful man. He loved his mother, his wife and his four children.”

Dukes said the family was already reeling from Travis’ death, and to lose Richardson was almost too much to bear.

According to the Mobile Press-Register, Travis, a resident of the Nymph community, was buried Monday.

Officers said Richardson was alone in his 2007 Chevrolet.