Captain Sarah M. Knutson Cullen was killed in Kandahar Province at the age of twenty-seven. The West Point graduate was from Eldersburg, Maryland. This was her first deployment to Afghanistan. She attended Liberty High School were she was in student government. She loved to ski, ran track and be in her high school musical. She was fluent in Spanish.

At West Point she studied law and was a member of the Judo team. She married a former Black Hawk helicopter pilot just four months ago.