Iraqi war vet victim of deadly Tucker bar fight

Iraq war veteran Adam Pearce survived Fallujah, scene of some of the U.S. military’s bloodiest urban combat since Vietnam.

But the former Marine lost his life early Sunday morning trying to stop a fight in the parking lot of a Tucker cocktail lounge. DeKalb County Police say his killer was a knife-wielding female who remains at large.

“He looked mean as hell, but underneath he had a heart of gold,” said Pearce’s mother, Pam Hayes, of Macon. “He’d help anyone, and that’s how he died.”

DeKalb Police have not yet released the incident report, but Hayes said witnesses told her the dispute began when a patron at the Last Great Watering Hole insulted the girlfriend of her son’s roommate.

“Some man made a derogatory comment about her tattoos, and [Pearce’s roommate] demanded he apologize,” Hayes said. “He refused and that’s when a fight broke out.”

Pearce interceded, his mother said, and was stabbed “3-to-4 times” by a woman associated with the man who allegedly initiated the brawl. His roommate, whose name has not been made available by police, suffered a stab wound in the back but is out of the hospital.

“He [Pearce] was surrounded by his friends,” Hayes said. “They didn’t even know he had been stabbed until he fell to the ground.”

Pearce, 28, was dead by the time paramedics arrived.

He joined the Marines after graduating in 1999 from Snellville’s Shiloh High School, said his father, Drew Pearce.

“He and three of his buddies had made a pact to join, but Adam was the only one who went through with it,” he said.

Pearce, part of an artillery unit charged with loading Howitzers, went to Fallujah convinced Iraqis were his enemy, his mother said.

“He got to know them, and it changed him,” Hayes said.

So did the warfare.

“He still had some bad dreams,” she said. “I remember him saying one of the first things he saw in Fallujah was a woman’s hand lying on the ground.”

Pearce’s love of motorcycles was his escape. He repaired them professionally and had recently built one, dubbed “Betty,” from scratch. The gasoline cap was recovered from a 1954 Ford Fairlane; the side mirror, from a ‘42 Chevy.

Last summer he crashed “Betty” in an accident police said he was lucky to survive, his mother said.

“He dislocated his shoulder, suffered a concussion, lost all the skin off his back,” she said. “But he walked away from it.”

Pearce had moved into a house in East Lake just last week.

“He had finally found the perfect place,” Hayes said.

Funeral services for Pearce will be Wednesday morning at Wages Funeral Home in Snellville.