An Army officer died during a training event at the service's Joint Readiness Training Center at Fort Johnson, Louisiana, on Saturday, the service confirmed.
First Lt. Zachary Galli died in an incident related to a fall, one source with direct knowledge of the situation told Military.com. He was assigned to the 749th Ordnance Company, 242nd Explosive Ordnance Battalion, of the 71st Explosive Ordnance Disposal Group, based out of Fort Carson, Colorado.
"Our thoughts and prayers are with the friends and family of the Galli family, the 749th EOD Co., and the greater EOD community," Col. Brennan Fitzgerald, commander 71st EOD, said in a statement.
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Galli, 23, was an explosive ordnance officer. A Williamsburg, Virginia, native, Galli commissioned into the Army just under two years ago from the University of Virginia's Reserve Officers' Training Corps, or ROTC, program, where he studied kinesiology.
His awards include the Global War on Terrorism Service Medal, the Army Service Ribbon and Basic Explosive Ordnance Disposal Badge.
The incident is still under investigation.
The Joint Readiness Training Center is one of the Army's premier training grounds. There, units often conduct large-scale training events before deploying abroad. Some 60,000 soldiers from the active-duty force, the National Guard and reserve rotate through the installation's pre-deployment training each year.
The death comes after an unrelated training incident in late April, in which a 7th Infantry Division soldier was accidentally shot at Joint Base Lewis-McChord in Washington state.
That soldier was shot by another service member with an M249 Squad Automatic Weapon, or SAW, when live ammunition was accidentally mixed in with blanks, according to three sources with direct knowledge of the situation. That soldier is still recovering after they were struck in the abdomen.
The service has also seen a string of back-to-back aviation incidents, with 14 fatalities last year and incidents on the rise this year.
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