Supporters rally to help US Army pilot critically wounded in Iraq
"Everybody has been so wonderful," his wife told ABC News.
An Army pilot critically injured by a Christmas Day attack in Iraq remains in intensive care more than a week after a militia's drone struck three service members stationed in Erbil -- but his friends and family are encouraged by the way that the public has rallied to support him as he recovers.
Chief Warrant Officer 4 Garrett Illerbrunn was struck in the head by by an Iraqi militia drone strike on the American base in northern Iraq, leaving Illerbrunn with shrapnel in his head. The shrapnel hit the motor function of his brain in what a friend of family said doctors considered a "devasting neurological injury."
Illerbrunn's wife, Lorna, said in statements sent to ABC News that the family is touched by a GoFundMe effort to raise money to cover costs they may incur to outfit their home with ramps and rails, noting the fundraiser has brought in more than $86,000 so far. Lorna Illerbrunn, a marathon runner, has told friends, "This is an ultramarathon; this is not a 5K."
Melissa Young, a fellow community member in Pinehurst, North Carolina, who has spearheaded the fundraiser, and her fiance are close friends with the Illerbrunns. The families use each other's help coaching teams and ferrying their kids between piano practice and karate. The GoFundMe idea was initially born to help friends build a treehouse for the Illerbrunn's son -- his promised Christmas gift this year.
Young said the response to the fundraiser has been overwhelming, even for a community with many military families like hers who know the risk of deployment.
"You believe that some people will step up to help. We did not believe it would be this much. You hope -- there's always hope that it will -- but everybody has been so wonderful," she said.
Young said that the military will cover some costs, such as medical bills, but explained, "That's not why we're doing this."
"We're doing it for everything that the military doesn't cover because their lives are going to be totally different. And I would like to be able to take off a little bit of burden from Lorna's shoulders while she navigates her new life," Young, who's organizing the fundraising with three other friends in the community, said.
"You know, you just you learn this is this is not going to go away anytime soon and anything that we can do for the family, that's what we're here for," Young added.
Young admires Garrett and Lorna, who's studying to be a nurse practitioner, and says they've been valued friends to them in Pinehurst.
"And they're just such a cool couple. One of those people that you kind of meet and you're like, man, I hope people think of me the same way that we think of them," she said.
Lorna is with Garrett at Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany, where he was transferred after the attack and remains in a medically-induced coma.
The medical providers attending to Illerbrunn hope to transfer him to Walter Reed Medical Center in Maryland when his condition stabilizes, where he's likely to face a long road still ahead.
A U.S. strike Thursday in Baghdad killed an Iraqi militia leader and his associate in a target the Pentagon described as an "Iranian proxy group." The Pentagon offered few details on the target, Mushtaq Jawad Kazim al-Jawari, also known as Abu Taqwa, of Harakat al-Nujaba (HAN), but it said he was "actively involved in planning and carrying out attacks against American personnel." The U.S. believes Abu Taqwa was responsible for most of the attacks on its forces in Iraq and Syria.
"As we've long said, we maintain the inherent right of self-defense and will take necessary action to protect our personnel," Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder, the Pentagon spokesman, said Thursday.
The strike on Christmas is one of 120 attacks on U.S. armed forces in Iraq and Syria since Oct. 17 as tensions simmer across the region since the outbreak of the Israel-Hamas war. Seventy-four Americans have been injured in these attacks, including those with past traumatic brain injuries, and all but Illerbrunn have been able to return to service.
The U.S. footprint of some 2,500 soldiers in Iraq and 900 in Syria, a counter-ISIS mission, has become a more frequent target of Iran-backed militias as the Iranian regime opposes American support of Israel in its offensive on Gaza. The Navy reports 25 attacks against commercial vessels in the Red Sea since November 18 by Houthi militants, a group backed by the Iranians and occupying the Yemeni capital. The U.S. has shot down 61 Houthi missiles and drones in that timeframe.
ABC News' Luis Martinez and Cindy Smith contributed to this report.
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