Friends and family are remembering a local Marine killed while serving overseas. YNN's Beth Croughan was in Mechanicville, the hometown of 26-year-old Lance Corporal Anthony Denier and has more.

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MECHANICVILLE, N.Y. -- "And when they knocked at the door and I opened it and I saw two Marines standing there, I just knew," said Mary Morgan.

She was waiting for her son's 6 o'clock phone call Sunday morning, but instead, there was a knock at her Mechanicville door.

"Everything was a blur after that," she said.

That was when she learned her son, 26-year-old Anthony Denier, was shot in the neck and killed while on patrol in Afghanistan.

"He was such a level-headed guy and I think that's what's keeping me straight right now, is because he would have told me, 'it is what it is.' And he knew, he did know, but he wanted to go," Morgan said.

Denier decided a long time ago, she said, that he wanted to become a Marine. He enlisted, she said, when he was 24 and was sent overseas on October 26th, 2012.

"You could see the man that he turned out to be, from the time he went in. Every time he came home, you'd see more and more of the man that he turned into," she said.

Morgan described him as caring, protective and her 'voice of reason.' She said he was a loving son and brother.

"Always willing to bend over backwards and help out with every and anything," said his sister Maria Betts.

And he was also described as a loving uncle and friend.

"Anthony did what he did for the right reasons. He has family here that he wanted protected. For the protection of us all. What he did, he did for us all. All of us," said his mother, Mary.

Lance Corporal Denier was a member of the 3/9 India unit, an infantry unit based in North Carolina.