Navy investigating death of SEAL candidate after ‘Hell Week’

The U.S. Navy is investigating the death of 24-year-old SEAL candidate Kyle Mullen and the illness of another candidate after the two were sent to the hospital last week while completing the final training phase, known as “Hell Week.”

Pentagon spokesman John Kirby urged patience during a press briefing on Monday as the Navy thoroughly investigates the cause of death.

“One such accident is one too many,” Pentagon spokesman John Kirby told reporters. “We just don’t know what happened.”

Mullen and another SEAL candidate were taken to the hospital “several hours after their Basic Underwater Demolition SEAL (BUD/S) class successfully completed Hell Week,” the Navy said Saturday. The two were not actively training. 

Mullen, a New Jersey native, is the fourth candidate to die during SEAL training since 2001. In 2016, Derek Lovelace, a trainee, died during a pool exercise in what the Navy ruled an accident. His death led to changes aimed to expand instructor awareness of candidates who might be in physical distress, according to ABC News.

Kirby noted that it was premature to criticize the SEAL selection process.

“The training has to be demanding, given the work that our Navy SEALs do on behalf of this country every single day,” Kirby told reporters. “So you would expect the standards to be very, very high for their readiness.”

Hell Week, conducted on the third week of training, is known to push Navy SEAL candidates through exhausting, high-intensity exercises with only about two to four hours of sleep. More than half the SEALS that enter “Hell Week” drop out.

“Hell Week really is one week of a simulated combat environment,” Cpt. Duncan Smith, a retired SEAL who served 32 years in the Navy, told ABC. “It’s physical. It’s also mental and it’s also our early look at how people operate as a member of a team.”

Smith, who is also executive director of the SEAL Family Foundation, noted that medical professionals are present every step of the way.

“There’s nothing about Hell Week that’s meant to be abusive,” he continued. “It’s demanding but there is a tremendous amount of science that goes into it.”