Navy report on SEAL trainee’s death details medics’ failure to help him

Navy SEAL candidates tried multiple times during the elite force’s punishing Hell Week training to get help for a fellow candidate who was suffering from pneumonia and whose heart stopped a few hours after the grueling week was over, but they were repeatedly rebuffed by instructors and medical staff, according to a new Navy report on the sailor’s death.

The report, issued by Naval Special Warfare on Wednesday, more than eight months after Seaman Kyle Mullen died at the SEAL training base in Coronado, California, was ordered to determine whether he died while performing his duties as a sailor. It found that he had.

His death, after days of struggling with breathing problems, raised broad concerns about how the training was run, including reports of abusive instructors, drug use and substandard medical care.

The Navy has already begun to address the situation, taking administrative action against the two top officers at the SEAL training base at Coronado as well as the doctor in charge of medical care there.

Medical staff members told Navy criminal investigators Mullen appeared to be fine in routine medical checks, and complained only of minor knee pain during the five-day maelstrom of sleep deprivation, hypothermia and physical exhaustion known as Hell Week. They said he passed a brief medical exam with no issues at the end of the week and then went to rest.

Five SEAL candidates, however, told investigators Mullen was clearly suffering long before his death, and they became alarmed when he began wheezing and coughing up large amounts of brown fluid. One student with training as a paramedic told investigators that he tried to take Mullen to get medical help halfway through Hell Week but was told by an instructor to turn around and go back to training.

By the final day of Hell Week, candidates told Navy investigators, Mullen was barely coherent and swollen. That day, the oxygen in Mullen’s blood reached dangerously low levels, and the medical staff gave him supplemental oxygen.

A few hours later, at the end of training for the week, medical staff said he was fine, but he left the medical exam in a wheelchair, too sick to walk.

The medical staff gave the sailors a written briefing a short time after that instructing them in capital letters not to seek outside medical help because it could jeopardize their training. Mullen died a few hours later.