Check Six

A report from Colorado:

GJ soldier dies trying to save girl

Mr. Fixit, as Spc. Jonathan Kenney was so appropriately called, embarked last year on a great undertaking.

The 31-year-old soldier who liked to tinker with cars and recently moved to Grand Junction left behind his family to serve in Iraq.

It wouldn't be a quick fix, but the man who loved to fix things died trying.

On Saturday, he stepped in front of a young Iraqi girl, one of many children caught in a crossfire in Baqouba, Iraq.

A bullet struck his heart, killing him instantly. He was less than two months into his deployment.

Kenney, a posthumous recipient of the Purple Heart, will be buried Saturday in Des Moines, Iowa.

He and his wife, Amber, recently purchased a home in the Grand Valley. The couple met at Metro Church of Denver and would have celebrated their sixth wedding anniversary on Valentine's Day.

Their last communication, according to family spokesperson and Homefront Heroes president Phyllis Derby, was a voice message Amber left for her husband: "And if this is you, Jonathan, I love you."

Jonathan Kenney leaves behind his 3-year-old son, Joshua. The couple was expecting a second child in May.

Kenney graduated from high school in Iowa City, Iowa, where he lettered in football. He pursued any number of sports, baseball and basketball included, in his free time.

Amber Kenney graduated from Grand Junction High School in 1988. She and Jonathan moved to the Grand Valley to be closer to her family. Jonathan Kenney worked for Grand Junction Chrysler Jeep Dodge.

Kenney served three years in the U.S. Army before joining the Colorado Army National Guard. He served with the 1-44 Air Defense Artillery Battalion, the same unit his wife would have served with. She was finishing up her training at Fort Bliss, Texas, when she learned of her husband?s death. As sole surviving parent of Joshua, she was honorably discharged, Derby said.

Jonathan Kenney is survived by his mother and stepfather, three brothers and one sister.

He will be buried next to his twin sister, who died at birth.

GRAND JUNCTION, Colorado (AP) -- A woman concocted a heartbreaking story of how her soldier husband died a hero in Iraq -- and then admitted the story was all a hoax.

"I think I need some serious counseling," 24-year-old Sarah Kenney told The Daily Sentinel newspaper on Wednesday editions. "This is the most serious lie I've ever told, but I've been caught in many lies."

The touching story of how Spc. Jonathan Kenney took a bullet meant for an Iraqi child on January 29 was reported by a score of Colorado media after a news release was sent to them by the nonprofit group Homefront Heroes.

In reality, there is no record of a soldier with that name dying in Iraq. Sarah Kenney is married to a man named Michael Kenney, and he is neither currently in the military nor serving in Iraq.
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Phyllis Derby, founder and president of Homefront Heroes, said Kenney convinced her group the story was true. The account of the fictitious man's death was then released to local media.

"I would have never thought in a billion years that she was lying to me," Derby said. She said the donations on behalf of the fictitious soldier would be returned.

Sarah Kenney, the woman behind the tale of an imaginary soldier killed in Iraq, said she just wants it to all be over.

"I think I need some serious counseling," 24-year-old Sarah said Tuesday at her singlewide in Candlewood Trailer Park. "This is the most serious lie I've ever told, but I've been caught in many lies."

Wearing Moose Country 100.7 T-shirts, Sarah Kenney and her husband, Michael Kenney, 30, relayed the events of the past week leading up to Sarah's admission she never had a husband serving in Iraq.

She admitted there was no Spc. Jonathan Kenney who died trying to save Iraqi children and that dozens of other details she relayed to Homefront Heroes, the local support group for soldiers' families, were untrue.

Mesa County District Attorney Pete Hautzinger said he had convened a team of investigators headed by his office to look into the hoax and determine whether any laws were broken.

Relatives of Sarah Kenney confirmed she had a long history of lies, and Sarah's grandmother said she was particularly worried for Sarah's son Joshua - one of the truths Sarah weaved into her fictitious tale about the heroic death in Iraq.

It all started with a friend, Sarah Kenney said in explanation while swaying back and forth in her living-room rocking chair, while Michael paused his video game to listen.

Sarah said she met a woman named Nicole Sission (a second time, she spelled the name Sissions) while she and Michael were employed with StarTek in Grand Junction.

Sarah said Nicole was a co-worker who hadn't heard from Jonathan since he was deployed to Iraq.

StarTek officials confirmed the Kenney couple's employment with the technical-services company but could not confirm the employment of a Nicole Sission.

"I looked through all the names in the database, and no Sission," said StarTek human resources manager Katie Plunkett.

Plunkett said the system includes all employees' names since the company's inception five years ago.

"All the details I told to Homefront were from Nicole," Sarah Kenney said. "It may be something she just pulled out of her head."

Sarah said Nicole was "gone" and that all her phones were "turned off."

There is no phone listing for a Nicole Sission in Mesa County.

Sarah said she didn't know Nicole's husband's name, or even if he was really Nicole's legal husband.

"His first name was Jonathan, so that's where I got that name, but I didn't know his last name," Sarah said. "I just hope he's still alive."

Sarah said the husband was in Iraq and that Nicole had wondered if he was alive or dead. Sarah said Nicole thought her going public with the story would bring Nicole some sort of closure.

That's when Sarah, using the false name of "Amber", approached Phyllis Derby, Homefront Heroes president, with the story.

"Amber" was the "first name that came to mind," Sarah said.

Sarah told Derby it was her husband in Iraq that had died and wove an elaborate series of supporting material, such as family history and burial information that later proved to be untrue.
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Greg Merschel, a former U.S. Marine who volunteers for military causes, said Sarah delivered a photo by hand to his office, telling him it was her husband, Jonathan Kenney.

Sarah said Tuesday she did not provide a photo to Merschel or Homefront Heroes and had "no idea" how the photo was supplied.

"I thought it was weird to see the photo in the newspaper," Sarah said. "I have no idea how it ended up there."

Michael Kenney said the picture in the newspaper, a cropped mug shot of "Jonathan," looked an "awful lot like a guy I was in training with."

Michael Kenney said he had served in the U.S. Army at Fort Hood, but that statement could not be confirmed by Army officials Tuesday.

The photograph, when shown in its entirety, revealed Michael Kenney sitting two seats down from the alleged "Jonathan" in military uniform.

When approached with that information about the photo Tuesday, Sarah said that photo of her husband's training class had disappeared from their home about five months ago, around the time she was friends with Nicole.

Michael Kenney said he didn't know the "truth" of the story until Monday night, when Sarah admitted she had lied to Homefront Heroes and the public.

Michael Kenney said that when he first heard about the dead soldier he thought it was his cousin, but had no confirmation until he learned the entire tale was concocted by his wife.

"I'm not mad at her, but it was something that hurt me," Michael Kenney said. "I'm thinking I should have done something to keep it from happening, her helping her friend like she did. That's what you get for sticking your neck out for a friend."
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Sarah Kenney has long been unreliable, said her grandmother, Syb Hayden, but unlikely to come up alone with a story such as the one she told about her "husband" in Iraq.

"There is no way she could come up with this alone," Hayden said. "If Sarah can imagine and concoct a story like that, she needs to be at Random House. The two of them, though, could concoct anything you want to hear."

Sarah Kenney has long been manipulative and convinced a series of counselors, who were paid for by her great-grandparents, that they, not Sarah, were the problem, Hayden said.

Sarah Kenney said she only hoped her friend would find out if her husband was alive or dead from going public with the story.

She wasn't sure how telling the tale of her friend's predicament as her own would accomplish that fact, but hoped it would help.
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Michael said he had never met Nicole, then later recalled that he had met her once when she visited him at his work.

When asked if she had received any monetary compensation from the story or had hoped to, Sarah Kenney said no.

"That's not at all what I was in it for," she said. "I wasn't going to have anything to do with the money that was raised. Let that money go back to the community or back to whoever donated it."

Sarah and Michael both work in the fast-food industry.

"We make a good living; why would we do that?" Michael said.

The Kenneys were said to have purchased a home near Grand Junction, after meeting at a church in Denver. It was reported that they would have celebrated their sixth wedding anniversary on Valentine's Day.