Today's story on Marine Pfc. Daurius Ray (at left) is one of redemption and sorrow -- a young man who overcame a rough start, being in foster care, to become a track star and then a member of the armed services who got killed at a party in a dispute not of his making.

Baltimore Sun reporter Justin Fenton captures his life and death in today's paper; he's third member of the military to die a violent death in Baltimore since Dec. 20. The loss of Ray was not a typical loss for this city. The only glimmer seems to be his foster family who provided him a stable life.

(From Justin: It should be noted that it was readers of this blog who pointed out that more American service members had been killed here in the city than in combat in Iraq over the past month. I doubted it at first, but it's true - there have been four service members killed in Iraq in that time frame, but only one was combat-related. Yes, most of the casualties are in Afghanistan these days, but there's still more than 100,000 soldiers in Iraq, according to Reuters.)

Then, on Tuesday, we learned the Baltimore area lost another Marine, this time fighting in Afghanistan. Brent Jones reports:

A 22-year-old Marine from Towson was killed Saturday in Afghanistan, according to the U.S. Department of Defense. Lance Cpl. Jeremy M. Kane was assigned to the 4th Light Armored Reconnaissance Battalion, 4th Marine Division, Marine Forces Reserve, based in Camp Pendleton, Calif. Kane died in combat in the Helmand province. He was the first armed-services member from the Baltimore area killed in combat this year. Kane joined the Marines in May 2007. He was serving his first tour in Afghanistan