Blog

Sgt. Kennedy Sanders was one of three U.S. service members killed in a drone attack at a base in Jordan over the weekend. Her mother, Oneida Sanders, said she is still feeling “disbelief, shock, anger.”

“I have so many questions,” Onedia Sanders told CBS News.

Kennedy Sanders, who was posthumously promoted from specialist to sergeant on Monday, was set to return home in August. The 24-year-old already had plans to take the next step in her military career, her mother said.

“Kennedy was full of life,” Oneida told CBS News. “She was a breath of fresh air. She was so likeable, by so many people.”

Sanders, along with Breonna Moffett, 23, and William Rivers, 46 — the other two service members killed in the attack — was an Army reservist at Fort Moore in Georgia. President Biden spoke separately with the families of all three slain soldiers to offer his condolences, the White House said.

“The president shared his encounter about losing a loved one, and that really comforted me,” Kennedy Sanders’ father, Shawn Sanders, said.

Mr. Biden’s first wife and one of his daughters were both killed in a car crash in 1972, when the president was still a senator-elect. One of his sons, Beau Biden, who served in Iraq as part of the Delaware Army National Guard, died of a brain tumor in 2015 at age 46.

“He made it very personal and I really felt that he had a sense of compassion for us as a family,” Oneida Sanders said.

Shawn Sanders said his daughter’s posthumous promotion was very meaningful.

“I really know what that meant to her,” he said. “She was working toward getting that promotion. That was one of the most special moments in this whole encounter, that, you know, that coming from the president of the United States.”