GARLAND, Maine — A 40-year-old Garland man was killed Saturday afternoon when a car bomb exploded in Kabul, Afghanistan.

Corey Dodge had been working in Afghanistan for the past nine years, first training Afghanistan police officers and later escorting high-ranking government officials as a private contractor with Virginia-based DynCorp International, according to his mother, Letha Dodge of Dexter.





His mother said her son was planning to return home in October when he would have turned 41 years old.

“He said it was getting rough over there. He worried he wouldn’t see his family again,” Letha Dodge said Sunday.

According to the news agency Reuters, violence has ratcheted up in the first half of 2015, with nearly 5,000 Afghan civilian casualties reported so far this year

Dodge was a good family man who loved his country, she said. He was married to Kelli Dodge and had four children. She said he had been sending in applications to police departments in Maine to have a job when he returned.

He attended Dexter schools.

Dodge had worked at the Maine State Prison and later with the Knox County Sheriff’s Office in Rockland before going to Afghanistan.

Rockport police Officer Craig Cooley worked alongside Dodge when the deputy worked for Knox County. Dodge would back him up on certain calls in Rockport. Dodge’s son Connor attended the same day care as Cooley’s son Gabe, Cooley recalled.

Cooley said that Dodge had recently sent in an application for a job with the Rockport Police Department.

“He was a good guy. He loved children,” Cooley recalled. “It’s a damn shame, it truly is.”

Reuters reported that the suicide attack outside a hospital on a residential street at rush hour, killing 12, mainly Afghan civilians, and injuring scores more, heightening the anger felt in Kabul after a barrage of deadly blasts this month killed dozens. Two other U.S. contractors were killed in the blast.

The attacker drove the car towards an armored pick-up truck belonging to DynCorp International, which was torn open and left twisted and blackened by the blast, according to Reuters. Dozens of vehicles were destroyed, including a school van.