It was just 8:30 a.m. Sunday when the two stone-faced Army officers pulled up to the neat, one-story, red-brick home at quiet and leafy Whitestone, Queens, where Vincent and Jean Prevete raised their son.

The grim news the officers carried spread quickly through the neighborhood: Jimmy Prevete, 22, won’t be coming home.

The tall, muscular athlete, a private in the 1st Battalion, 506th Infantry Regiment, died Sunday on the dusty, desolate plains of Habbaniya, Iraq, just outside Falluja. A sandstorm overtook his vehicle and the driver lost control. The Army is investigating.

“We all grew up together, watched each other’s kids,” a neighbor, Pat Trougakes, said. “He left a sister and two parents who really need him. This is the first boy to die over there. It’s a shock.”

Throughout the day yesterday, neighbors, friends, and relatives arrived at the Prevete home, as members of the press waited outside in cars, hoping to speak with the bereaved family sequestered inside. In the end they declined to comment. Outside their home, the trimmings told the story: a flag lowered to half-mast on the porch, the shades drawn, a single red frilled banner with a star in the middle, next to the “Support Our Troops” sign, the star there to signify the family’s sacrifice.

Neighbors remember Jimmy Prevete for his quiet, respectful demeanor and his handsome looks. During high school at St. Francis Prep, he played on the football team. During the summer he traded jabs with childhood friends, shooting hoops shirtless, and sending boisterous laughs echoing through the quiet neighborhood of carefully manicured lawns and hedges, of little children, of big Catholic families.

“He was a good kid – not the type you see on the street drinking and mouthing off,” one close neighbor said. The man, who declined to give his name, said he was a retired police officer with three small children.

“I’m not sure anyone feels the full impact yet,” he said. “It’s very sad, this whole situation. They gave up their kid.”

“It’s a shame to lose somebody so young, everyone is just sad,” said Kim Bedosky, who lives a couple of doors down. “What am I supposed to say to his mother, thanks? He did this for us, for my kids, for everybody’s kid, so that they would have freedom. But his family has to carry the burden.”

A man who emerged from the house said: “Don’t ask me nothing because … I hate this war. Jimmy was my daughter’s boyfriend.” He raised his hands to fight back the tears, shook his head, and slowly drove away.

Across the street, Prevete’s old buddy David Pelaze, 20, stood outside, wearing his camouflage Marine cap. He and Prevete joined the military around the same time one year ago, and Mr. Pelaze is scheduled to ship out to Iraq in the weeks ahead.

“I’m not ready to talk about it,” he said of his friend’s death. “It hasn’t sunk in yet.”

Later Mr. Pelaze and several other of the slain soldier’s friends gathered at the house of another neighborhood pal, to reminisce and grieve. Together, they emerged red-eyed, carrying trays covered in aluminum foil, and made their way solemnly down the street to pay respects to the Prevete family.

The area where Prevete lost his life couldn’t have been more different from the one he grew up in. Deep in the Sunni Triangle, Habbaniya gained a sinister reputation as a dusty killing ground during purges of rebellious Shiites in the Saddam Hussein years. After the invasion, coalition forces discovered mass grave sites in the area, containing bones in civilian clothes and skulls marked by execution-style bullet-holes in the back of the head or the temple.

In the war in Iraq as of yesterday, the coalition forces have recorded 1,216 deaths: 1,077 Americans, 68 Britons, six Bulgarians, one Dane, two Dutch, one Estonian, one Hungarian, 19 Italians, one Latvian, 13 Poles, one Salvadoran, three Slovaks, 11 Spaniards, two Thais, nine Ukrainians, and one soldier whose nationality has not been identified.