Updated at 5:08 p.m. May 3, 2016:
A Coronado-based Navy SEAL killed during intense combat in Iraq was identified Tuesday as a 31-year-old grandson of Charles Keating, the face of the 1980s savings and loan scandal.
Charlie Keating IV, who grew up in Phoenix, died when an Islamic State offensive in northern Iraq broke through Kurdish lines, according to The Arizona Republic. His identity was revealed to the newspaper by a relative.
The special forces operative was about 20 miles north of the ISIS stronghold of Mosul when he was shot. SEAL team members are serving as military advisers in the area.
“It is a combat death, of course, and a very sad loss,” Defense Secretary Ash Carter said from Germany.
According to multiple reports, SEALs and airstrikes by U.S. warplanes beat back the ISIS attackers, killing more than 20 of them. The death is the third of U.S. personnel on the ground in combat against Islamic State forces. Marine Staff Sgt. Louis Cardin, of Temecula, died in March, and Delta Force Master Sgt. Josh Wheeler was killed in an October mission that freed around 70 hostages.
The younger Keating was a champion distance runner in high school, and a cousin of Olympic swimming champion Gary Hall Jr.
His grandfather, who died in 2014, saw his financial empire collapse during the S&L crisis in the late 1980s, when thousands of financial institutions went bankrupt and investors lost their life savings. The reputations of five senators who stood by the elder Keating, including Alan Cranston of California, were sullied by the association.
— City News Service
