Craig Harris, Robert Anglen and Anne Ryman

The Arizona Republic

Navy SEAL Charlie Keating, grandson of the Phoenix savings-and-loan financier with the same name, died Tuesday in northern Iraq after Islamic State militants penetrated Kurdish defensive lines and launched an attack with small arms and car bombs.

Bradley Boland, Keating's uncle, confirmed to The Arizona Republic that his nephew had been killed.

Charlie Keating IV, known as C-4 because he had the same name as three generations before him, also is the cousin of Olympic swimming champion Gary Hall Jr.

ISIL kills U.S. Navy SEAL in northern Iraq

Arizona's governor, Doug Ducey, ordered flags across the state to be lowered to half staff from sunrise to sunset Wednesday to honor the Navy SEAL. They will be lowered again on the day he is buried.

"It's horrible and it breaks my heart," said Conley Wolfswinkel, a Tempe, Ariz., developer and close friend of the Keating family. "My heart goes out to the family. No one deserves this."

Keating IV, a 2004 graduate of Arcadia High School in Phoenix, was an acclaimed distance runner — city and region champion in the 1,600-meter run as a sophomore, junior and senior. The 31-year-old earned all-city and first-team all-state honors as a high school senior, according to Indiana University, where he ran in college.

He was on track and cross-country teams at Indiana University for two years before enlisting in the military. His former college coach, Robert Chapman, said the runner wanted to be a high achiever but not necessarily to be a Big Ten champion or All-American.

“You’re doing this to find out how good you could be,” said Chapman, now associate director for sports science at USA Track & Field. “Everyone ends up going about that in their own way. Charlie, in his own way, found out how good he could be.”

After attending Indiana University, he went directly to begin training in Coronado, Calif., to become a Navy SEAL, the elite special operations force. Less than 25% of people who begin the training successfully complete it, according to the Navy.

“He had a calling, a sense of duty, to serve his country,” said his cousin, Liz Keating, 32, of Cincinnati. “He just had this sense of purpose for what he was doing. He loved what he was doing. He was a real-life superhero.”

Who was Charles Keating?

He completed the intensive 1½-year training without having to stop for injury or sickness, which few people are able to do, Liz Keating said. He graduated SEAL training in 2008 and was a special warfare operator 1st class when he died.

"He was a fearless person," she said. "He literally could do anything he wanted to do."

In high school, Keating IV spent three weeks in a steamy Costa Rican jungle, eating only beans and rice and paddling a canoe up to 40 miles a day as part of the Discovery Channel's Outward Bound cable-TV series set in the Latin American country.

The then-teen, who ran more than 70 miles a week in high school, had to get permission from school officials to miss his classes and had to make up his homework before and after he went on the trip. For being on the show, he received $300.

Teens on the show weren't allowed to contact their families during the three-week trip although they could receive letters.

"You just had to deal with it," he said in a 2002 interview. "It was really, really fun, but at times I said, 'Why am I here?' "

Keating IV's childhood friends were stunned at his death. Monique Cruz of Phoenix, who became friends with him in middle school, said she talked with him at their 10-year high school reunion in 2014.

“I’m just really glad that my last memory with him was such a good one,” Cruz said. "He was doing extremely well and was so happy. He kept me laughing the whole time.”

Former S&L exec Keating dies at age 90

He came alone to the reunion but had shared that he was engaged to Brooke Clark, whom he had met in California. Clark was planning to buy her dress this week for their November wedding, according to The San Diego Union-Tribune.

Keating IV's great-grandfather served in the Army in World War I. His grandfather, Charles H Keating Jr., served as a Navy pilot in World War II and also was a champion collegiate swimmer. Keating's grandfather died at age 90 in 2014.

Keating IV's younger brother, Billy, also is a Navy SEAL.

Charles Keating Jr.'s brother, Bill, 89, was a senior vice president of Gannett and president of its newspaper division as well as publisher of The Cincinnati Enquirer and a former congressman.

Keating Jr.'s real-estate developments, including the Phoenician Resort, are crown jewels of the Phoenix area, and his well-publicized charitable works included befriending and offering financial help to Mother Teresa.

Yet Keating Jr. also will be remembered as a man whose financial empire cost many investors their life savings when it crumbled, spending years in prison in connection with the crimes. His name also became part of the moniker for a group of senators who intervened on his behalf with regulators during the 1980s savings-and-loan scandal.

The 31-year-old's death is the third American combat death in Iraq since the U.S. military deployed advisers and other personnel there in 2014 to support the war against the Islamic State:

Marine Staff Sgt. Louis F. Cardin, 27, of Temecula, Calif., was killed March 19 in a rocket attack on an Iraqi base.

27, of Temecula, Calif., was killed March 19 in a rocket attack on an Iraqi base. Master Sgt. Joshua Wheeler, 39, a Special Forces soldier from Roland, Okla., was killed Oct. 22 in a raid that freed 70 Islamic State hostages from a makeshift prison in northern Iraq.

A Defense Department official, who was not authorized to speak publicly, confirmed that the service member killed Tuesday was a SEAL who was shot a little after 9:30 a.m. Arabia Time.

As a high school senior, Keating IV said he was proud of his grandfather and enjoyed having the same name even when other children made fun of him.

U.S. Marine killed in ISIL rocket attack in northern Iraq is identified

"I'm really close to him," the young Keating said at the time. "What happened in the past, I really don't care."

On Tuesday, White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest said Islamic State terrorists overran Iraqi soldiers guarding a checkpoint, then attacked Kurdish Peshmerga fighters 2 miles away where Keating IV was advising.

"He was not on the front lines, and it turns out that being 2 miles away from the battle between ISIL and Iraqi forces is a dangerous place to be," Earnest said, using an acronym for the Islamic State.

Defense Secretary Ash Carter described the fatality as a combat death that highlights the dangers American troops face in Iraq, even though they are not engaged in direct fighting with the Islamic State.

"It shows you it's a serious fight that we have to wage in Iraq," said Carter, in Germany to attend a ceremony at the headquarters of U.S. European Command.

Soldier who died in raid to free Islamic State hostages identified

Keating IV was part of a small team advising Peshmerga forces in northern Iraq. He and his colleagues had been checking on outposts when Islamic State fighters mounted a complex attack that allowed them to hit the special warfare operator 2 to 3 miles beyond the front lines, a Pentagon official said.

The SEALs were among the first advisers to help mentor forces to counter the Islamic State.

Militants used car bombs and bulldozers to breach the front line. They raced ahead and attacked the command post where the SEAL was located.

There was no indication that Islamic State fighters knew that U.S. troops were at the facility at the time, the official said.

Contributing: Yihyun Jeong, The Arizona Republic; David Woods, The Indianapolis Star; Kevin Grasha, The Cincinnati Enquirer; Jim Michaels, USA TODAY; David Larter, Navy Times. Follow Craig Harris, Robert Anglen and Anne Ryman on Twitter: @charrisazrep, @robertanglen and @anneryman