A funeral will be held on Friday in Joliet for a soldier who fought in the Korean War and his remains were now positively identified.

At 10 a.m. Friday, U.S. Army Pfc. Vincent A. Vega, 18, of Chicago, will be escorted from Tezak Funeral Home, 1211 Plainfield Road, Joliet, to St. Joseph Catholic Church, 416 N. Chicago St., Joliet.

The Mass for Vega will begin from 11 a.m. until noon.

Then Vega will be taken to his final resting place at Abraham Lincoln National Cemetery. 20953 W. Hoff Road, Elwood.

The funeral service at the cemetery will begin at 1 p.m.

“[Vega] made the ultimate sacrifice in service to his country,” according to Vega’s obituary on Tezak Funeral Home‘s website.

Vega was reported missing in action on July 5, 1950, near Osan, a city south of Seoul, South Korea, after his unit encountered enemy combatants, according to a statement from Rolling Thunder, a nonprofit organization that seeks accountability for all prisoners of wars and missing in action service members.

[Vega] was never reported as a prisoner of war and subsequent searches of the battlefield failed to recover his remains. Lacking evidence of continued survival, the U.S. Army issued a presumptive finding of death of Dec. 31, 1953,” according to Rolling Thunder.

In 2021, a set of remains from the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific in Hawaii were sent to a laboratory with the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency, according to Rolling Thunder.

The scientists identified the remains as Vega using dental, anthropological, and isotope analysis, as well as circumstantial evidence, according to Rolling Thunder.