Navy Recruit Dies After Collapsing During Fitness Test

GREAT LAKES, IL — A Navy recruit died after collapsing last month during a fitness test, a week before she was due to graduate from training at Naval Station Great Lakes, Navy officials confirmed.

Seaman Recruit Kierra Evans, 20, of Louisiana, died Feb. 22 at Northwestern Lake Forest Hospital, several hours after she collapsed during the Navy's physical fitness assessment in Great Lakes, officials said. She was in her sixth week of training and had been due to graduate Friday.

The cause and circumstances of her death remains under investigation by the Naval Criminal Investigative Service and the Lake County Coroner's Office, authorities said.

"Prior to this [assessment], recruits undergo weeks of rigorous physical conditioning under the instruction of their trained Recruit Division Commanders," said Lt. Joseph Pfaff, public affairs officer for Recruit Training Command Great Lakes.

Pfaff said Evans immediately received first aid after collapsing and her family was immediately notified when she was taken to the hospital. She had been due to graduate March 1.

Navy Recruit and Training Command officials had not previously disclosed the death, Military.com reported Monday. Citing information from the Naval Research Center, the website reported Evans collapsed during the running portion of the test, its third and final part. She had already completed the curl-up and push-up elements of the assessment, a standard physical evaluation completed by all recruits prior to graduation.

Pfaff said it was rare for recruits to die during training, noting the last such death was more than four years ago. Slightly more than 30,000 recruits graduated last year.

"The Navy and Recruit Training Command have the highest focus on recruit safety and welfare, including medical screening, monitoring of activities by medical personnel, Recruit Division Commanders, and support staff, while executing a carefully developed curriculum," he said in a statement.

Evans is at least the second recruit to die at Great Lakes in the past five months. Last October, 24-year-old Joshua Edge, a fire controlman seaman recruit from Ohio, was found unresponsive in his barracks. Later that month, the commanding officer of the training support center was removed "due to a loss of confidence in his ability to command."

Alex Reynoso, administrative clerk for the Lake County Coroner's Office, said the cause of manner of Edge's death was not yet known. She said a policy in established by Coroner Howard Cooper's office forbids the release of the time and location of people's deaths before cases are formally closed, sometimes months later. Such a policy is unusual among Chicago area coroner's offices, which routinely release such information.

According to an online obituary, Evans was an active member of the Navy Junior Reserve Officers' Training Corps for all four years of high school prior to her graduation in from Neville High School in Monroe, Louisiana.

In a post to social media as she began boot camp on Jan. 2, Evans wrote she would miss her mother and sister but knew she was a part of the U.S. Navy and Chicago was "where I belong" for the next eight weeks.

"To all my closest friends that stood by my side through it ALL I love you all [so] much and will be back soon," she wrote. "#prayforme."