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Of all the things Gilbert Moreno will miss about fallen Army Sgt. Victor M. Cota, what he'll miss most is the sound of Cota's laugh.

"He was known for his laugh. That's how I'll remember him: always telling jokes," said Moreno, a longtime friend of Tucson's latest war casualty.

Cota, 33, was described by friends on Thursday as a man with a zest for life who took pride in his military service but was increasingly worried about the spiraling violence he saw in Iraq.

The father of two died a day after he was injured in northwest Baghdad by a homemade bomb on Tuesday. He's the 35th service member with ties to Tucson or Southern Arizona to be claimed by the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Moreno, 37, who had known Cota for more than a decade and was a witness at Cota's 2003 wedding, said he last spoke with his friend a few weeks ago when the soldier phoned home from the war zone.

"He said that it was getting kind of bad over there and he was a little scared," Moreno recalled. He said Cota was on his third overseas deployment since 2003 and had hoped he might be able to come home by summer.

Moreno said he also spoke by phone to Cota's widow, Liliana, the day after the soldier's death. "She was very choked up and could hardly talk. She still can't believe it, just like we can't."

Cota "really loved her. They seemed very happy," Moreno's wife, Cassandra Moreno, 25, said of the soldier's marriage.

The Cotas had been living at Fort Hood in Texas where he was assigned to the 4th Infantry Division's Special Troops Battalion. Near Thanksgiving last year, the couple returned to Tucson to visit with friends and relatives before he went back to war.

Family friend Yvonne Ybarra, 32, of Tucson, saw Cota during that visit and said the soldier seemed in good spirits as he was preparing to deploy.

"He was in a good mood, cracking jokes," said Ybarra. "Every time I saw him, he was always smiling."

Complete details about Cota's other survivors was not available on Thursday.

Gilbert Moreno said Cota also is survived by his mother, Irene Cota, and brother, Gilbert Cota, both of Tucson, and by two school-age children, a son and a daughter, from a previous marriage. The soldier's father is deceased, he said.

Cota's family is declining to talk to the media at this time, said Shari Lawrence, a spokeswoman for the Army's Human Resources Command in Virginia.

According to Army records, Cota was born in Florence. It isn't clear when he came to Tucson, but he enlisted here in 2000 as an armor crewman and left for Iraq with his unit last November.

David Camacho, 35, of Tucson, Cota's friend since both attended Amphitheater High School in the early 1990s, said Cota felt that it was his calling to be a soldier.

"He was proud to be in the Army," Camacho said. "He loved being a military man."