CLEARWATER - Chris Neidrich was scheduled to fly home after six months in Iraq but volunteered to stay behind to help train some civilian security replacements.
The decision cost him his life.
Neidrich, 31, a Clearwater resident who worked for the large private security contractor Blackwater USA, was killed Saturday with three other Blackwater employees after their two-vehicle convoy was attacked on the road to the Baghdad airport.
Neidrich worked for Critical Intervention Services of Clearwater, which provides security services. Neidrich was on loan to Blackwater, said K.C. Poulin, president of CIS.
Neidrich is believed to be the first combat fatality among private security contractors from the Tampa Bay area, Poulin said.
Neidrich was planning to marry when he returned to Pinellas, Poulin said. He is survived by a 3-year-old son.
Neidrich is best known locally for his 1998 arrest by a Pinellas sheriff's deputy for wearing a cap emblazoned with LAPD, the initials of the Los Angeles Police Department. The deputy said he wasn't an officer and shouldn't have been wearing it.
The arrest generated international publicity for Neidrich, who had long wanted to work in law enforcement.
Pinellas Sheriff Everett Rice eventually apologized for the arrest and prosecutors dropped a misdemeanor criminal charge against Neidrich.
Neidrich was unable to find a job as a police officer, and his lawyer said he believed publicity from the arrest dogged him.
"Now I wish he had gotten into police work," said David Talkington, 30, of Dunedin, a close friend. "Then he wouldn't have gone over there. Maybe he would still be alive."
Poulin said Neidrich was a team leader for up to seven security specialists, all well-armed civilians who worked a range of jobs, from guarding VIPs to escorting supply convoys.
Members of the team Neidrich worked with the past six months already had rotated back to the states or to Kuwait, Poulin said.
The CIS Web site shows Neidrich standing next to L. Paul Bremer, the U.S. administrator in Iraq whose motorcade Neidrich once protected.
By some estimates, up to 20,000 civilian security personnel are working in Iraq. Like Neidrich, who once trained to become a Navy SEAL before an injury forced him out, many are former military people trained in weaponry and antiterrorism tactics.
The lure for many is money. Poulin said he believed Neidrich earned about $15,000 a month while in Iraq, more than double his normal salary.
Attorney John Trevena, who represented Neidrich for the LAPD cap arrest, said Neidrich was proud of his career.
"He had achieved so much since the arrest," Trevena said. "I don't think everyone who knew Chris realized just how highly trained he was in antiterrorism and executive protection."
Poulin said Neidrich was on a detail protecting members of the Saudi royal family traveling in the United States before he went to Iraq.
Poulin said he doesn't know why Neidrich's two-vehicle convoy was traveling to the airport.
Another CIS employee, Kenneth Barker of Tampa, died June 3 from injuries suffered in a car crash in Iraq. He was 25.
Iraqis driving in two chase vehicles fired a rocket-propelled grenade at the trailing Suburban in Neidrich's convoy, Poulin said. The Suburban wasn't protected by armor. The second vehicle, which was armored, doubled back to offer cover.
During a gun battle, the vehicles caught fire. Three other people from the convoy managed to fight their way to the other side of the road, flag down a passing car, and travel to safety with U.S. coalition forces at their headquarters in the Green Zone in central Baghdad, the Associated Press reported.
All three had been wounded, Poulin said. Aside from Neidrich, the dead included another American and two contractors from Poland.
"It was a hell of a firefight," Poulin said Monday. "They engaged hostiles in multiple vehicles. They expended all their ammunition in the fight. The attack was well orchestrated. These weren't your run-of-the-mill terrorists."
Neidrich's cousin, Tony Hager, 18, of Spring Hill said he joined the Marines almost a year ago in part because he wanted to follow in Neidrich's footsteps.
"He was like my big brother," Hager said. "He never looked at the negative side or the danger of his job. He just looked at what he had to do to get the job done. He loved what he did."
Neidrich, friends said, was looking forward to coming home. In e-mails to friends, he joked about the necessity of driving 90 mph or faster to avoid road-side bombs in Iraq.
"You know when I get home I'll have to not drive for like two months," Neidrich said in one of his last e-mails. "Can't remember the last time I drove slow, stopped for a light or stop sign or even a person."
