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Russia attacks Ukraine: American reportedly killed while fighting in Ukraine

By Bob D'Angelo, Cox Media Group National Content Desk
By Bob D'Angelo, Cox Media Group National Content Desk

A U.S. citizen working with a private military contracting company died Monday while fighting in Ukraine, his family said.

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Willy Joseph Cancel, 22, died while fighting alongside Ukrainian forces, members of his family confirmed to CNN.

The private company paid Cancel, a former U.S. Marine, to fight against Russian forces, his mother, Rebecca Cabrera, told CNN. He signed with the company before hostilities broke out in Ukraine on Feb. 24, supplementing his job as a corrections officer in Tennessee, Cabrera told the news network.

When the war began, Cabrera said the company was looking for contractors to fight in Ukraine, CNN reported. Cancel agreed to go overseas, his mother said.

“He wanted to go over because he believed in what Ukraine was fighting for, and he wanted to be a part of it to contain it there so it didn’t come here, and that maybe our American soldiers wouldn’t have to be involved in it,” Cabrera told CNN.

Cabrera said her son entered Poland sometime in mid-March. She did not say where her son was killed and did not name the private contracting company. She said that her son’s body has not been found.

“They are trying, the men that were with him, but it was either grab his body or get killed, but we would love for him to come back to us,” Cabrera told CNN.

A State Department official said they are “aware of these reports and are closely monitoring the situation.”

“Due to privacy considerations, we have no further comment,” the official told CNN. “We once again reiterate US citizens should not travel to Ukraine due to the active armed conflict and the singling out of US citizens in Ukraine by Russian government security officials, and that US citizens in Ukraine should depart immediately if it is safe to do so, using any commercial or other privately available ground transportation options.”

Cancel is survived by his wife and a 7-month-old baby, Cabrera told the news network. He was originally from Orange County, New York, according to his brother-in-law, Devin Tietze Jr.

Cancel’s widow, Brittany Cancel, told Fox News she sees her husband as a hero, The Associated Press reported.

“My husband did die in Ukraine,” Brittany Cancel said. “He went there wanting to help people, he had always felt that that was his main mission in life.”

The announcement of Cancel’s death by his family comes hours after a British citizen fighting alongside Ukrainian forces was killed, the BBC reported.

The United Kingdom’s Foreign Office confirmed that a British citizen had been killed and another man was missing, the news network reported.

While the Foreign Office has not released the name of either man, the BBC, citing anonymous sources in Ukraine, the man killed was Scott Sibley.

A spokesperson with the Foreign Office said it was “urgently seeking further information” on the missing persons, the BBC reported.

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