PORTAGE | Dave "DJ" Murray never expected the homecoming he received Saturday afternoon.

When the family SUV exited the Indiana Toll Road here, it was accompanied by a police car and a couple of motorcycles.

The Marine Corps reservist said his dad, who was riding in the truck with him, commented on how nice it was to have the escort.

Then the small group turned the corner. In the parking lot of Comfort Inn were some two dozen motorcycles, Mayor Olga Velazquez, police vehicles, fire units from Portage, South Haven and Union Township and more than 60 people.

They gathered to give Murray, a 2006 Portage High School graduate, an appropriate welcome home after a seven-month tour in Iraq.

"It was absolutely amazing," Murray, a lance corporal and the son of David and Pam Murray, said later.

He gave a special thanks to the some two dozen members of the Patriot Guard Riders who helped him come home.

"I didn't expect this at all. I know a lot of you were vets who didn't get this, so that means even more to me," said Murray as he stood in his parents' driveway in the Savannah Heights subdivision of the city.

His family was excited and relieved to see Murray arrive home.

"I'm ecstatic. You say you don't worry, but you worry," his mother, Pam, said.

Grandparents George and Kay Nettles made the drive from Ellenton, Fla., to see their grandson, who they haven't seen in more than a year.

"This is great. We read the papers every day. We wish they all could have come home," George Nettles said.

Murray joined the Marine Corps Reserve two years ago after graduating from high school. He attended Indiana University Northwest studying criminal justice, but after a semester, his unit, based in Chicago, was called to active duty.

Murray served as an infantry rifleman with the Fox Company 224 in the Anwar province of Iraq, where his unit worked to gather intelligence on terrorist activity through search and seizure patrols and other methods.

"We did a lot of law enforcement work," he said of his role in the war.

Now he'll take it easy for a time, with a few days off and then report to Chicago for administrative work. With four more years committed to the reserve, he'll report every other weekend and for summer duty. Theoretically, he said, he won't be deployed for two more years. He'll go back to construction work with his father when things settle down, then in January he plans to go back to IUN to continue working on his degree. Eventually, he said, he'd like to work as a police officer.