Army Spc. Patrick Ryan McCaffrey gave up his job at a Palo Alto body shop to join the Army out of patriotism, and was killed in action in Iraq on June 22, 2004.

Almost two years to the day later, the government is now reporting that McCaffrey was killed by Iraqi soldiers he and other Americans had helped train, several news outlets reported today. The initial report was that he had been killed by insurgents during a night patrol.

High-level American officers are scheduled to visit his mother, Nadia McCaffrey, at her home in Tracy today.

McCaffrey, 34, had worked at Aikens Body Shop on Park Boulevard.

An investigation by the Army’s Criminal Investigation Command has concluded that Aikens and an American officer were actually killed by Iraqi soldiers they were patrolling with.

Nadia McCaffrey became a critic of the war, traveling to Texas last August to camp outside President Bush’s ranch with Cindy Sheehan and other opponents of the war.

“We’re not going to stop,” Nadia McCaffrey said after she returned to the Bay Area from Texas last August. “We have the power to change people’s minds.”

— Don Kazak

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