FORT STEWART, Ga. — The tragic deaths of three soldiers at Georgia’s Fort Stewart over the weekend underscore the unforgiving reality of today’s U.S. military service.
Statistics show that training accidents kill more armed-services personnel every year than combat does.
On Monday afternoon, 11Alive learned the names of the three solders killed during their training exercise on Sunday.
“I would like to offer my sincere condolences to the family members of the three soldiers that we lost in yesterday’s tragic accident," said Major General Tony Aguto, Commander of the 3rd Infantry Division.
He held back tears as he started Monday's news conference. He and his staff worked for months planning the training exercises that that killed three of his soldiers.
He said everyone rehearsed the exercises over and over again to make the training as close to combat conditions as possible, but safe.
Six soldiers with the First Armored Brigade Combat Team were inside their Bradley Fighting Vehicle when it somehow rolled off of a bridge, flipping upside down and submerging into the stream.
Officials said the three who died were Sgt. First Class Bryan Jenkins, from Gainesville Florida, Cpl. Thomas Cole Walker from the shores of Lake Erie northeast of Cleveland, Ohio, and Private First Class Antonio Garcia from a suburb of Phoenix, Arizona.
Jenkins, 41 years old, served two tours in Iraq. He joined the Army just three days after the 9/11 attack. Walker, 22, enlisted at just 18 years old.
Officials said Garcia, who was just 21 years old, joined the army a year ago.
According to a Congressional report earlier this year, there were 16,652 deaths of U.S. Armed Services personnel between 2006 and 2018. Of those, 16.3 percent were killed in action and 31.9 percent were killed in training accidents - so many fatal training accidents that, last year, the then-chair of the House Armed Services Committee Mac Thornberry of Texas said bluntly, “the readiness of the military is at a crisis point.”
“Training is tough, realistic, and we train for all sorts of conditions," Aguto said. "We will learn things to help prevent this in the future."
The Army is now investigating this latest training accident and conducting the autopsies. The investigation is expected to take several weeks.
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