Manalapan Mom Questions 'Hell Week' SEAL Training After Son's Death

MANALAPAN, NJ—Regina Mullen, the mother of Navy Seaman Kyle Mullen who died during the "Hell Week" portion of SEAL training on Feb. 4, said she recently received the Navy autopsy she had been waiting for, but said it provides no new answers.

If anything, it is driving her to ask more questions about the nature of Navy SEAL training and what she says is the lack of timely medical attention given her son, she said.

The autopsy showed Kyle Mullen died of acute pneumonia caused by Streptococcus pyogenes, a strep bacteria, some time after his Basic Underwater Demolition class in San Diego.

Regina Mullen, a nurse, said it appears her son was training in ocean water so cold that his blood rushed to his core, while his extremities collected fluid. She said he was swollen and could not walk.

"I'm disgusted. I wish I could have helped him," Mullen said.

She confirmed that the autopsy report stated her son "was being looked after by non-medical personnel to tend his basic needs. He was in a wheelchair, unable to stand or walk." He had reportedly been coughing up a "red-tinged fluid that had nearly filled a 36 oz. sports drink bottle."

Mullen said the report confirms her son was not being seen by medical personnel, but rather was being helped by his fellow SEAL candidates.

She said the report confirmed that when emergency medical help was called for one of the other trainees who was having trouble breathing, when they saw her son become unresponsive, they then took him to the hospital, where he was pronounced dead.

Mullen says her son should have been taken to the hospital immediately after he began to exhibit breathing problems. "He should have been intubated (for breathing) and given intravenous antibiotics," she said.

She said the Pacific water the trainees were in "was the coldest it had ever been" The surf immersion training is known as "surf torture," she said.

She wants Congress to look into why trainees considered "the elite," she said, need to be put in such extreme physical danger. And she wants to know why there isn't more accountability on the part of Navy personnel for serious injury, and, as in the case of Kyle, death among trainees.

The investigation into Kyle Mullen's death by the Naval Criminal Investigative Service, or NCIS, is "under review" as of last week, she has learned.

In a coincidence she said she found disturbing, she received a condolence card from President Biden the same day as the report was mailed to her. "It's been more than four months," she said.

Regina Mullen and her sons T.J. and Kyle grew up in Manalapan, where Regina Mullen still lives.

"Everybody loved my son," she has said in a past interview, "and I'm just overwhelmed by the the amount of people whose lives he touched."

Regina Mullen raised her sons as an independent mother, who trained to be a nurse in her 40s and took jobs to make ends meet after her divorce. She felt emotionally able to return to work in May. Her son T.J. recently married.

She has enlisted the help of Rep. Andy Kim, D-N.J., to explore holding hearings on what is known as the Feres Doctrine from 1950 that prevents members of the armed forces who are injured in active duty from suing the federal government.

All the background on Kyle Mullen, a Manalapan High School graduate, that has been published shows a young man who not only had promise, but who already accomplished so much: He was a star football player who led Manalapan High School to its first-ever championship in 2014, his senior year, and maintained a 4.4 GPA. He also played baseball for the Manalapan Braves. He was recruited by Yale University to captain the football team and later graduated from Monmouth University. After college, he chose to join one of the most elite U.S. military units: The Navy SEALs.

As part of that group, "he endured everything. But his own Navy didn't care about him," Regina Mullen has said.

She says she now understands the Navy has made some changes, including having a medical team on site, not just on call, as was the case with her son.

She said young men see glamorized versions of what it is like to be a SEAL. Her son was always competitive and wanted to test his limits, she said.

But she said the Navy needs to take more care with the young people they train. "They are torturing good men," she said.