Farqad Mohammed Khinaisar was driving to work in her dark-green Kia Sephia at 8 a.m. May 29 when she came up behind three U.S. humvees that were about to enter a traffic circle in Baghdad's Sadiya neighborhood.
As Khinaisar approached, a gunshot was heard from the third humvee. The soldiers at the rear of the convoy thought they had seen a suicide bomber, Lt. Col. David Funk said, and they fired a warning shot, then kept firing.
Khinaisar, a 57-year-old high school Arabic teacher, was shot once in the head. She died five days later, on June 3.
Many Iraqis say they understand why U.S. forces must be here - to keep the country intact, protect its fragile new government, and stop the violence. But enough civilians have been killed in one-sided encounters with frightened U.S. troops that Baghdadis often cower when Americans are near. Whenever U.S. troops leave their bases, they say, everyone is vulnerable.
"We are living in constant terror because of these convoys," Khinaisar's husband, Mohsen Hameed, said at his wife's funeral.
It is not clear how often American soldiers, strangers in a land where it is virtually impossible to distinguish friend from foe, mistakenly kill Iraqi civilians. U.S. officials say they keep no statistics, and since last year the Iraqi Health Ministry has declined to release the ones it keeps.
At the Iraqi Assistance Center, which pays families for damage caused by U.S. forces, the head of the compensation section said about 1,000 requests a month were received, most of them for property damage.
The soldiers in the humvees that Khinaisar approached - from the Third Battalion, Seventh Infantry Regiment of the Third Infantry Division, based at Fort Stewart, Ga. - were on a ride-around to get to know the community, putting themselves at risk at a time when car bombings have been taking an increasing toll on U.S. troops in Iraq.
There had been three such blasts in Sadiya in the last three weeks, and the Third Infantry had lost two soldiers a month earlier to a car bombing in an adjoining neighborhood. The prospect of another attack was "at the forefront of everyone's mind," said Funk, the battalion commander.
No one knows what Khinaisar thought or saw. She spoke only once before she died, when her husband arrived at the hospital. When she heard him speak, she quietly called out his name - Mohsen.
When Khinaisar's car was searched, soldiers found only a purse and a Koran on the dashboard. They discovered no evidence that she was a suicide bomber.
Funk, who was not present when Khinaisar was shot, defended his troops. Soldiers must identify a potential suicide bomber in a split second, and mistakes "tear us up," he said. "I truly, honestly believe that, in the balance, we do so much good here," he said. This shooting "does not define our presence."
One fatal mistake can undo a lot of good work.
After the shots were fired from the U.S. humvees, Khinaisar's car jumped the curb and came to rest against a utility pole. A crowd quickly gathered. Witnesses said the Americans were standing to one side, talking about what to do. Funk said they were waiting for an ambulance.
A truck driver in the crowd standing in the traffic circle, Raid Sabri, 38, said he saw Khinaisar's hand and leg move. He told the Americans that if they would not take her to the hospital, he would. They agreed to let him take her, he said.
"We were furious after seeing them not rescue her while she was still alive," Sabri said. "To them, killing a human being is nothing. When an American soldier gets killed, they make a big fuss. Helicopters and ambulances come to rescue. But when an Iraqi gets killed in the street, it means nothing to them."
Funk said an ambulance was en route. Even his bleeding soldiers have had to wait long periods for help, he said.
Sabri and some other men lifted Khinaisar into the back of Sabri's white Datsun pickup. They took her to the closest hospital, Yarmouk, where records show that witnesses carried her in. According to those records, she was immediately transferred to Kadhimiya Hospital, the best place for head injuries.
At the scene, U.S. forces found Khinaisar's address book, leading them to her niece, Inas Ahmen Muhammad, 25, who lived in an apartment above her aunt's house.
Muhammad rushed to Kadhimiya and found her aunt lying alone in a hallway, blood coming from her head. Khinaisar's hand and leg were still moving, but in Iraq's overburdened hospital system, she was kept waiting.
"We were begging the doctors to come and do something," Muhammad recalled.
Khinaisar's husband and several family members said they waited until 5 p.m., when hospital staff members finally wheeled her into an operating room for a four-hour procedure.
After the operation, she did not speak again.
Khinaisar's funeral lasted three days. Family members erected a large tent on a neighborhood street, the kind that let everyone know they were mourning. Khinaisar's husband and the other men wore long white robes in 105-plus-degree heat.
In the house, the women, in black gowns, sat on cushions arranged on the floor and spoke scornfully of the U.S. forces that killed her. Even a young boy sitting next to his mother tried to describe how the Americans were attacking people.
Khinaisar's husband was distraught. "Why are they roaring down our streets? Why can't they stay on their bases?" he said, moving black prayer beads through his fingers faster and faster.
Khinaisar's car is at the Sadiya police station, where it will stay until her relatives pick it up. It has five bullet holes - two in the windshield, one on the roof, two in the hood.
Funk said an investigation of the shooting found that the soldiers had given Khinaisar several warnings - hand and spoken signals - before firing a warning shot.
He said the investigation also found that Khinaisar's car was 15 feet from the humvees - so close that had she been a suicide bomber, the soldiers likely would have been seriously hurt. The Iraqi men at the traffic circle gave conflicting accounts, putting her as far as 100 feet away.
Some family members speculated that Khinaisar, frightened, might have hit the gas pedal instead of the brake when she heard the warning shot. The military said that after the warning shot, she moved faster, not slower.
A police commander at the Sadiya station said the Iraqi police were not looking into the shooting. "If the Americans are part of the investigation," he said, "we don't investigate. We have no authority over the Americans."
Muhanned Methal, Khinaisar's nephew, said the family had no plans to ask for compensation.
"What are we going to do with money?" he said. "We lost the important thing. All she did was go to school."
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