Slain Marine’s widow, father express gratitude to community

LEESBURG — On the the morning of May 26, when Toni Sutton saw three U.S. Marine officers walking up the sidewalk toward the front door of her house in Jacksonville, N.C., her heart stopped for a moment.

She then braced herself for the bad news she knew she was about to hear. But she still wasn’t ready for it.

The Marines informed her that her husband, Lance Cpl. Steve Sutton, had been killed the day before by an IED (Improvised Explosive Device) blast in Afghanistan’s dangerous Helmand Province.

He was 24.

“The whole thing was horrible,” Toni Sutton said Wednesday. “Seeing the three Marines coming up and waiting for the knock on the door, knowing they were going to tell me something that I didn’t want to hear. I knew I had just lost my best friend; I knew had just lost my everything.”

Halfway across the country, Steve Sutton’s father, Gene, was visiting with fiancee Bonnie Stanfield’s relatives in Windsor, Ill.

“My phone was in the truck, so they (the Marines) called my fiancee’s phone,” Gene Sutton recalled. “They asked for me and said they had some news about Steve. I asked if he was hurt, and they said ‘It’s bad, Mr. Sutton.'”

The Sutton family offered special thanks to the following for their support:

Albany Fire Department, Albany Police Department, Albany Water, Gas & Light, American Legion Posts 30 and 182, Americus Fire Department, Art