A recruit at the Marine Corps’ main East Coast training base was injured in a two-story fall Friday, a Marine spokesman Friday.
The recruit arrived at Parris Island, South Carolina, on Oct. 24 and was undergoing pre-training screening when he was injured, according to a statement from Capt. Greg Carroll.
Carrol would not comment on the extent of the recruit’s injuries.
“A recruit assigned to Support Battalion, Recruit Training Regiment, Marine Corps Recruit Depot Parris Island fell from the second story in the recruit processing center today and has been transported to an off-site medical facility,” said Carroll. “The command has directed an investigation regarding this incident per standard operating procedures.”
“The command is currently focused on the recruit’s health and is in close coordination with the family,” he added.
If the recruit had passed his pre-training requirements, he would have been assigned to 3rd Recruit Training battalion, according to a Marine drill instructor familiar with the matter who spoke on the condition anonymity because of his active-duty status. At three months long, Marine Boot Camp, known as Recruit Training, involves an initial week of uniform issue, medical screenings and paperwork called “receiving.” During receiving, there is minimal training and the recruits do not have their assigned drill instructors. As “forming” week is mainly administrative, there is little of the same intensity associated with the bulk of the recruits’ time with their assigned training battalions. Third battalion is one of four training battalions on the base and, in recent months, has been at the epicenter of a number of recruit-related hazing incidents.
On March 18, Raheel Siddiqui, a 20-year-old of Pakistani descent, fell almost 40 feet from the third floor of his barracks and died a short time later. Siddiqui’s death was ruled a suicide, but an ensuing Marine Corps investigation found that Siddiqui had been slapped by his drill instructor before he ran the length of his barracks and jumped from its stairwell. The investigation also found that, months earlier, the same drill instructor that had slapped Siddiqui had also put another recruit in a dryer before turning it on and had singled out that recruit because of his religion.
Almost two dozen Marines are under investigation for their roles in the hazing incidents and Siddiqui’s death though none of them have yet to be court-martialed.
Parris Island is one of two Marine Corps boot camp training facilities in the United States, and the only one that trains female recruits. The second training facility is in San Diego, California.
(c) 2016, The Washington Post · Thomas Gibbons-Neff
