The National Guard Readiness Center in Columbia has formally been renamed for Spc. James Anderson Chance III, a Marion County soldier killed in Iraq.

Chance, 25, of Kokomo, was a member of Company C of the 890th Engineer Battalion, which is based in Columbia.

He was killed on Nov. 6, 2003, at Allsand, Iraq, on the Syrian border, when his vehicle ran over two Russian mines that had been planted by terrorists, said Lt. Col. Johnny Sellers, who was his battalion commander at the time.

“He was a good young soldier,” Sellers said Thursday at the ceremony. “He served his country, and he served his family. He was doing what he wanted to do.”

Mississippi National Guard spokesman Lt. Col. Tim Powell said naming the center after Chance is part of a Guard program to name readiness centers in the state after soldiers killed in action during Iraq and Afghanistan.