Topeka ? A 25-year-old who graduated from Emporia High School was among three soldiers who died in a weekend explosion in Iraq, the Defense Department said Monday.

The department identified the dead as Cpl. Juan Carlos Cabral Banuelos, of Emporia; Sgt. Eliu Miersandoval, 27, of San Clemente, Calif., and Pfc. Holly McGeogh, 19, of Taylor, Mich.

The department said the soldiers died Saturday when an explosive device hit their vehicle. They were in a convoy near Kirkuk.

The Defense Department said the three were assigned to Company A, 4th Forward Support Battalion, 4th Infantry Division, from Fort Hood, Texas.

Cabral’s cousin, Marisol Gomez, said her cousin was a native of Geres, Mexico. She said her cousin spent most of his childhood in Riverdale, Utah, and moved to Emporia with his family as a teenager.

She said her cousin was a popular student in high school who dreamed of enlisting in the Army after graduation. He became an Army mechanic and was stationed in Fort Hood, Texas, before he was deployed to Iraq.

“When he was in high school that was one of his goals, to finish high school and graduate and go to the Army when he graduated,” Gomez said. “He said he liked it there (in the Army). It was difficult, but he liked it.”

Gomez said he would be buried in Utah, where most of his family lives.

She said the soldier’s death was extremely painful because in just a few weeks he would have been reunited with his wife and two young children.

Cabral’s wife, Anita Cabral, 24, told the Standard-Examiner of Ogden, Utah, that she met her husband-to-be when she was a young child. The pair married in September 1998, a few months after Cabral enlisted.

“He was proud of his boys, proud of his family. … I’m going to go back to Utah and raise my boys like he wanted me to,” Anita Cabral said. The boys are 7 years and 18 months old.