A soldier died Thursday morning during training at Fort Lee in Prince George County, Virginia, according to post officials. The soldier's name is being withheld pending notification of next of kin, and officials say no foul play is suspected while the cause of death remains under investigation.
Fort Lee officials said the soldier died during training in a training area on post, according to WRIC ABC 8News. The station reported that details surrounding the circumstances of the death have not been released, and investigators have not said what kind of training was underway when the soldier died.
Officials have not disclosed the soldier's age, unit, or hometown, and no timeline has been given for when the name might be released. The station's report notes only that next-of-kin notification is pending, a standard step the military takes before identifying a service member who has died.
A Painful Pattern at the Prince George County Post
Thursday's death is not the first training fatality to hit Fort Lee. In an earlier incident, Private Anthony R. Milo, 24, of Colorado Springs, died after winds carried him away from his landing zone during a parachute jump and slammed him into power lines, according to 12 On Your Side. Milo was assigned to the 23rd Quartermaster Brigade as a parachute rigger, and soldiers in that training jumped from a Blackhawk helicopter at 1,500 feet into a field surrounded by power lines and trees, per the outlet's report.
Fort Lee said at the time that there had never before been a fatal accident at that particular parachute-training field, despite decades of use, and no other injuries were reported in connection with Milo's death, the same report states. Training accidents involving Army service members are not confined to Fort Lee. A West Virginia Army National Guard soldier was fatally injured during a training exercise in nearby Suffolk, Virginia, in April 2019, according to the West Virginia National Guard.
Army-Wide Training Deaths Have Trended Downward
Army-wide, training fatalities have generally declined in recent years, though the most recent complete figures available date back several years. The Army recorded 20 soldier deaths in on-duty training accidents in fiscal year 2021, which ended that September, marking its lowest total for the second consecutive year, according to a report from Stars and Stripes. Of those 2021 deaths, nine occurred in ground accidents and 11 in aviation crashes, the outlet reported, down from 24 training deaths in 2020 and 26 in both 2018 and 2019.
The Army separately reported 87 soldiers died in off-duty accidents in 2021, with off-duty accidents rising 20% from the year before, per the same Stars and Stripes report. Fort Lee officials have not said whether Thursday's death will be classified as a training accident once the investigation concludes, and no further details have been released beyond the statement that foul play is not suspected.
