A Santa Barbara County man killed during the Korean War more than 70 years ago has finally been properly identified.

Corporal Carmen Carrillo of Lompoc had been reported as a missing soldier since 1951. He was 20 years old when he was reported missing in action.

Carrillo was a member of the United States Army and lost his life during a skirmish in South Korea.

“Corporal Carrillo entered the U.S. Army from California and served in Headquarters Company, 1st Battalion, 38th Infantry Regiment, 2nd Infantry Division,” according to the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency (DPAA).

The DPAA is U.S. Military agency that is tasked with identifying and recovering military personnel who were taken as prisoners of war or reported missing in action.

The agency says Carrillo was holding a defensive position on a hill between two rivers as part of a United Nations defensive line known as the “No Name Line.”

On May 16, 1951, his location came under attack by Chinese and North Korean troops. Carrillo’s position was eventually overrun and many of his fellow troops retreated. For two days, his infantry regiment successfully defended the line, ultimately maintaining it, but the unit suffered major casualties during the attack.

One of the casualties was Carrillo, who was reported missing in action on May 17, the exact circumstances of his death left unknown.

It would take decades before his remains were found. In 2013, the South Korean Ministry of National Defense Agency for Killed in Action Recovery and Identification recovered several remains from the area where Carrillo was reported missing in action.

Those remains were transported to the United States where they remained interred until Sept. 22, 2021, when they were taken to a DPAA lab for testing.

On Feb. 2, some of those tested remains were positively identified as Carrillo. In the weeks that followed, his surviving family members were informed of the discovery.

For more on Carrillo’s life and the identification of his remains, click here.

Carrillo is memorialized on the Courts of the Missing at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific in Honolulu, Hawaii, the U.S. Military says.