HERNANDO –October 3, 2012
A 52-year-old contractor from Citrus County was one of two people killed last weekend in Afghanistan.
According to Bay News 9’s partner newspaper the Citrus County Chronicle, Kevin O’Rourke, who lived in the town of Hernando, was in Afghanistan as a civilian contractor with NATO, working for Engility, a law enforcement professional firm based in Alexandria, Va.
A former New York City police officer, O’Rourke missed being in the World Trade Center by 20 minutes on September 11, 2001. He spent hours that day helping a friend trapped in the rubble.
Friends say after 9/11, O’Rourke saw “a great need to go to (Iraq and) Afghanistan and to help the younger generation understand what we went through in New York.”
New York Post October 1, 2012
A retired NYPD sergeant working as a civilian contractor in Afghanistan was killed during an apparent “insider attack” by members of the Afghan military.
Kevin O’Rourke, 52, and an unidentified US soldier were slain Saturday in the clash with Afghan troops.
O’Rourke had been on the force for 20 years and worked as member of the NYPD’s elite Emergency Service Unit.
He was also one of the department’s scuba instructors, based at Brooklyn’s Floyd Bennett Field.
O’Rourke, originally from Long Island, retired in 2003 and later moved to Florida.
The soldier was the 2,000 service member to die in the 11-year conflict.
Three Afghan troops were also killed in the shootout at a checkpoint in the eastern part of the country.
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