Capt. Nathan S. Dalley, a West Point graduate who died Monday in Baghdad, will be buried in a Salt Lake County cemetery overlooking Brighton High School, where he was a senior class president.
   
    "We have lost a friend," said Maj. John Frisbie, spokesman for the 2nd Brigade, 1st Armored Division in Baghdad, where Dalley served. "His death has had an impact on our spirits at the brigade headquarters. We're hurting at the loss of a man who worked with us here every day."
   
    Dalley, 27, was deployed with the Army's 2nd Brigade from the U.S. base at Baumholder, Germany. For the past seven months he was serving in the unit's headquarters in Baghdad.
   
    He died Monday at about 11 p.m. from a gunshot wound the Pentagon described as "non-combat related." His death was under investigation.
   
    "He was amazing, so full of life," said Dalley's sister, Alicia Schroeder of Kaysville. "He wanted to experience everything, to see everything and to try everything. He had no fear. He wanted to serve his country, and he chose to go to Iraq. He wanted to fight for our country and the Iraqi people."
   
    Dalley was an honors student at Brighton High School in Cottonwood Heights and senior class president for the class of 1994.
   
    Janet Crist, former adviser at Brighton, remembered Dalley as "someone who stood out. Always eager, always wanting to know what the next task was going to be.
   
    "It brings the war too close to home," said Crist, now an assistant principal at Joel P. Jensen Middle School, where a teacher is deployed to Iraq. "When you know someone over there and you hear of the attacks and deaths, it affects you much, much more."
   
    Dalley once spoke of personal qualities he admired in a Brighton teacher who was blind, describing her as someone who "doesn't act like the world owes her anything.''
   
    He went on to graduate from West Point in 1998. Frisbie in a telephone interview called him "a hard working soldier, who was also reliable and dependable."
   
    Dalley is survived by his mother, Sandra Dalley of Kaysville; sisters, Schroeder and Catherine Dalley, Salt Lake City; and brother Aaron Dalley of South Jordan. His father died in an airplane crash in 1984.
   
    Schroeder said her brother's body has been flown to Dover Air Force Base with 17 men killed in the two Black Hawk helicopter crashes. She said private funeral arrangements are pending.
   
    The family plans to lay him to rest near his former high school.
   
    "He was a good kid, like all the other good kids who are dying over there right now," said Brighton Principal Robert Sproul, a Vietnam veteran. "They're taking over responsibilities many people aren't willing to take. We owe them our gratitude."
   
    The number of U.S. military personnel killed in nonhostile incidents in Iraq stands at 127. Another 267 Americans have died from hostile fire. Of those, 103 died in nonhostile incidents and 153 from hostile fire since May 1, when President Bush declared major combat operations had ended.
   
    Other Utahns killed
   
    * On Feb. 2 during the U.S. military buildup, Chief Warrant Officer John Darren "J.D." Smith, Taylorsville, was killed when his U.S. Army Black Hawk helicopter went down in the Kuwaiti desert.
   
    * On March 29, Staff Sgt. James W. Cawley, Layton, was crushed to death when a coalition Humvee rolled over him during the push to Baghdad.
   
    * On April 2, Brigham Young University graduate Lt. Nathan White died when his helicopter was accidentally shot down over Iraq by a U.S. Patriot missile.
   
    * On April 3, Staff Sgt. Nino D. Livaudais, Syracuse, was at a U.S. checkpoint in western Iraq when a car bomb exploded, killing him and two other Army Rangers.
   
    * Also on April 3, Sgt. 1st Class Randall S. Rehn, former commander of the South Salt Lake Recruiting Station, died in fighting near the Baghdad airport.