NORTH MANKATO — When his son went ahead with plans to buy a new Dodge Charger just weeks before leaving on a second tour in Iraq, Charlie Thompson didn’t understand his logic.

It’s a decision he completely understands now. Thompson received the news at 5:30 p.m. Monday that his son, 26-year-old U.S. Army Staff Sgt. Jacob Thompson, was killed in Iraq while doing house-to-house searches with his unit in Baqubah. Two other soldiers also were killed.

“I told him it didn’t make sense to let a new car depreciate and lose time on its warranty when he could only use it for a couple months,” Charlie Thompson said. “He told me, ‘Dad, I don’t know if I’m going to come back. I want to have one muscle car in my life. I want to experience that.’

“He was right. Why shouldn’t he have that? He deserved it.”

Jacob Thompson, a North Mankato native and West High School graduate who had just started his third enlistment in the Army, was scheduled to return to his home base at Fort Lewis, Wash., next month. His unit was originally scheduled to return in May, but the tour was extended to support a troop buildup in Iraq.

Charlie Thompson and his wife, Barb, were visiting friends in Green Bay, Wis., when they were contacted by an Army official. They drove back to North Mankato so they could break the news to their son, Jon, in person.

That was at about 1:30 a.m. Tuesday morning. By 4:30 a.m. they were in Spring Valley telling their other son, Jason, his brother had been killed.

Jacob was the youngest of the Thompson’s three sons and closest with Jason, so Charlie said he was expecting the last stop to be the worst one. Then he found out Jason and Jacob had talked when Jacob was home on leave. Jacob had insisted that if anything happened to him, that new Charger, with its powerful Hemi motor, would belong to Jason’s 3-year-old son, Lukas.

“I honestly believe he was afraid something was going to happen just because of a lot of things he said,” Charlie Thompson said.

He last talked to his son Thursday. He said he was concerned about going to Baqubah. Jacob also said he was looking forward to doing just a few more “trips to the field” before returning to Baghdad, his father said. The next stop would have been Kuwait before Thompson’s unit returned to Fort Lewis sometime around Sept. 15.

Jacob Thompson led a unit of about six men in a Stryker brigade, his father added. They searched out forward targets, then called in the forces needed to handle any trouble they found. Charlie Thompson described Strykers as tank-like machines heavily equipped with electronics equipment, but with less firepower than a tank.

It was a job Jacob loved doing, both his parents said. He also found satisfaction in getting to know the Iraqi people he worked with regularly, especially the children. He enjoyed showing videos of himself riding bikes or playing soccer with groups of young friends he had met.

When Barb sent care packages every couple of weeks, she often included stuffed animals for Jacob to hand out to the kids he would meet during missions.

“I wanted him home in May, but he wanted to stay,” she said. “He wanted to do his job. I’m proud of him because he was doing what he wanted to do.”

When Jacob wasn’t on duty, fishing was his favorite hobby. Hunting was a close second and he maintained a large collection of rods, reels, lures and guns, his father said. Introduced to angling at age 5, he spent hours at Spring Lake Park fishing for sunnies. He was just 7 when he caught his first trophy fish, a small mouth bass at Lake of the Woods.

“The reason Jason looked up to me was all of the fishing lures,” said his uncle, Gordon Thompson of Bloomington, who joined Charlie and Jacob on that trip.

“I was impressed with what a leader he became,” Gordon Thompson added. “I knew he wanted to be over there and I knew he was a real dedicated soldier.”