SUGAR HILL, N.H. (AP) – Family and friends of a National Guardsman seriously wounded in Iraq are keeping in touch and up to date on his condition through the Internet.

Sugar Hill Police Chief Jose Pequeno, a sergeant, suffered a head wound last week in Ramadi, Iraq in an insurgent attack that injured another New Hampshire soldier and killed a Vermont National Guardsman.

Pequeno was taken to the National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda, Md., where he remains in “a deep coma,” according to a Web site journal entry posted by his sister, Elizabeth Bagley.

Many messages have been posted to the site, including well-wishers in Sugar Hill, where Pequeno has been police chief since 2001; from Lisbon, where Pequeno and his family live; and from soldiers serving abroad and police officers throughout the state.

Pequeno’s wife, Kelley, has also posted messages to update Pequeno’s friends at home.

On her Web site posting, Bagley wrote that she plans to read aloud to her brother all messages posted to the site.

“Each day I take these messages into him and read them to him,” Bagley wrote. “He may not be able to respond, but I will continue to have faith that he can hear these messages and he knows that we are all thinking of him.”

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On the Net:

www.caringbridge.org/visit/josepequeno

Eds: Police officers also have set up a Jose Pequeno Benefit Fund at Nothway Bank. Contributions made out to the fund may be sent in care of the North Woodstock branch of the bank to P.O. Box 9, Berlin, NH 03570.