The death of a trainee at Joint Base San Antonio-Lackland remains under investigation.
Nineteen-year-old Air Force basic trainee Kelani Thomas died Monday morning after collapsing during routine physical fitness training.
According to a statement from the base, “Following her collapse, on-scene medical personnel began immediate resuscitation efforts until Emergency Medical Response personnel arrived. Thomas was then transported to San Antonio Military Medical Center where a medical team was unable to revive her.”
Thomas was in her first week of Basic Military Training assigned to the 322nd Training Squadron.
She was from Troy, Alabama, and had passed all the medical exams throughout her recruiting and training process and had no health restrictions. Over the weekend, on May 2, she had passed her initial fitness assessment that included a timed 1.5-mile run. An autopsy is being conducted.
Last February, another 19-year-old trainee at Lackland, Terron Moore from Indiana, collapsed following a run. He was in his second week of basic training. He had been transported to Southwest General Hospital just after 5 p.m. on Feb. 20, 2014. Doctors, unable to save the teen, pronounced Moore dead at 9:40 that evening.
A JBSA spokesperson, Collen McGee, had told Texas Public Radio then that deaths in training were not common, and that the last time a death occurred, prior to Moore, was in October 2011.
JBSA-Lackland trains nearly 40,000 USAF personnel each year.
