Twenty years after 9/11, one of the last U.S. Marines killed in Afghanistan comes home

U.S. Marines carry the casket of Marine Corps Sgt. Johanny Rosario Pichardo, who was among 13 U.S. service members killed in the airport suicide bombing in Afghanistan’s capital Kabul, into a funeral home in her hometown, in Lawrence, Massachusetts, U.S., September 11, 2021. REUTERS/Brian Snyder

LAWRENCE, Mass. (Reuters) - U.S. Marine Sergeant Johanny Rosario returned to her hometown in Massachusetts in a casket on Saturday, one of the last American service members killed in Afghanistan during a war set in motion exactly two decades ago by the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks.

Several hundred people gathered near the Farrah Funeral Home in Lawrence, Mass., where Rosario's remains arrived in a black hearse with a police motorcycle escort. Marines in dress uniform carried the casket into the funeral home, as veterans in the crowd, some of whom had not worn a uniform in years, snapped to attention.