SAN ANTONIO – The Air Force announced Tuesday that the airmen who died during training last year at Camp Bullis died due to hyperthermia.
Airman First Class Kenneth Sturgill died on July 7, 2016, while training at the SERE (survival, evasion, resistance and escape) Specialist Training Orientation Course.
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The temperature that day reached 102 degrees.
“Airman Sturgill was found unresponsive at the end of a six-hour solo living exercise,” the Air Force said in a statement. “Previously, multiple safety checks during the day by Air Force instructors had found him not to be in distress. Attempts by both military and civilian medical personnel to revive him proved unsuccessful.
Sturgill was from Livermore, California. He completed Air Force Basic Military Training June 3, 2016, and started the SST-OC June 20.
The Air Force said the “solo living exercise simulates conditions students might encounter if isolated, as well as demonstrates the physical and mental rigors of being a SERE specialist.”
This is the first death at the course, which has been conducted at Joint Base San Antonio - Lackland, since 1992.
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