Skip to footer

Four Marines killed: accounts differ in fatal Camp Pendleton accident

Sources give competing accounts of how four Marines were killed at Camp Pendleton Wednesday. It's unclear whether they were conducting a sweep or were involved in a training exercise.

|
Lenny Igneizi/AP
Vehicles file through the main gate of Camp Pendleton Marine Base on Wednesday in California. Four Marines were reported killed in an accident on Wednesday.

While bereaved families grieve privately for the four US Marines who died Wednesday in California, unnamed sources have given news outlets conflicting accounts of what happened.

The accident occurred at the Zulu Impact Area of the 125,000-acre Camp Pendleton near San Diego, where Marines conduct artillery and bombing exercises. The Associated Press cited a Marine official who anonymously said the accident had taken place during a "periodic sweep of explosive materials." But according to NBC San Diego, "sources inside the Pentagon said the Marines were not clearing the range, but instead doing some sort of training when the deadly detonation occurred."

The deaths come six months after a US Navy SEAL was killed in a vehicle accident during a May training exercise. Just two months before that, a mortar explosion that killed seven Marines during a training exercise in Nevada prompted questions about the necessity of live-fire training in an era when explosions can now simulate the chaos of warfare without replicating its injuries.

NBC San Diego reported on six accidents involving Pendleton-based Marines since the start of 2011. Claiming a total of 14 lives, they included a skydiving accident, two helicopter crashes, and an amphibious assault vehicle that sank to the bottom of a basin. 

Also during 2011, two soldiers collapsed during separate 2011 training exercises, prompting a probe into the stimulant Dimethylamylamine, a geranium-based body-building supplement that was found in their systems.

According to the Department of Defense, 424 active duty US military personnel died worldwide from accidents in 2010. In comparison, 456 died as a result of "hostile action" that year, and 289 deaths were self-inflicted. In September of this year, 1.38 million Americans were serving on active duty.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.
editor@csmonitor.com
Subscribe
Mark Sappenfield
Editor

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

Subscribe to insightful journalism

QR Code to Four Marines killed: accounts differ in fatal Camp Pendleton accident
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/USA/USA-Update/2013/1114/Four-Marines-killed-accounts-differ-in-fatal-Camp-Pendleton-accident
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe