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Mom of Navy Seal candidate who died hours after completing ‘Hell Week’ tells disturbing story

October 14, 2022 | | Print Article

The mother of a U.S. Navy Seal candidate who died during the toughest part of training, known as “Hell Week,” is deeply unsatisfied with how the federal government has handled the investigation into her son’s untimely death.

As far as Regina Mullen, the mother of deceased U.S. Navy SEAL candidate Seaman Kyle Mullen, is concerned, the government has been telling blatant lies in an effort to smear her son and blame his death on his own alleged actions.

As previously reported, her son had just completed “Hell Week” in February of 2022 when he suddenly took ill and died soon after. The Navy released a 300-page report this Wednesday revealing that he’d died of acute pneumonia and cardiac arrest.

“During Hell Week, he had respiratory problems, including fluid in his lungs, coughing and difficulty breathing, rapid weight gain and swelling in his legs, and disorientation, according to the investigation,” according to NBC News.

“Medical professionals examined Mullen every day that week, but his symptoms were common among many of the candidates, and, according to witnesses, he declined more medical attention for fear it would exclude him from completing his training,” NBC News reported.

By the time he’d completed “Hell Week,” Mullen had “gained 22 pounds from swelling and fluid retention, and he had to return to the barracks in a wheelchair.”

“Witnesses reported that he was coughing and spitting up red-tinged fluids and that by that afternoon he was bloated and gasping for air and that his skin was turning blueish, a witness said. Several hours later, paramedics found him unresponsive in his barracks. He died at a hospital that evening,” according to NBC News.

Speaking with Fox News, Mullen’s mother was livid that none of her son’s superior officers have been charged and held accountable.

“I’m disappointed still that no one’s really in trouble. I am disgusted. I was disgusted,” she said.

“You can’t just inflict punishment or charges against somebody without all the evidence … that’s their explanation right now. So, I said if nobody’s ever in trouble … that will be unacceptable to me. And I would do a march on Washington because this is wrong,” she added.

She was also upset that some within the military have tried to scapegoat her son by seemingly blaming performance-enhancing drugs (PEDs) for his death.

“One of the changes the Navy has adopted since Mullen’s death is including ‘medically safe-to-train’ PED testing ‘through urine tests’ for candidates. … The Navy is also working on an ‘exception to policy’ to expand the authority to test candidates for PEDs in order to help in ‘understanding the scope of PED use within the force and counter unauthorized PED use,'” according to CNN.

But this narrative is bunk, Mullen’s mother said.

“It has nothing, zero, to do with my son’s death. It’s completely unrelated. Ultimately, scientifically proven by, yes, urinalysis, blood work on two toxicologies, and the Navy went a step further and checked his brain matter. Zero evidence of any PEDs. How dare they try to paint a picture and tarnish my son’s reputation!” she told Fox News.

The speculation over her son’s alleged PED use came about after the Armed Forces Medical Examiner’s autopsy report revealed that he’d died with an enlarged heart.

“Medical experts who reviewed his case for the investigation were split over whether his enlarged heart was a side effect of the arduous training or possibly due to the use of performance enhancing drugs, or PEDs, after drug paraphernalia were found among his possessions,” according to NBC News.

But when Mullen’s mother enlisted an independent medical examiner to conduct their own autopsy on her son’s remains, they came back with a different answer.

“The independent autopsy found that Mullen’s enlarged heart was an underlying condition rather than a contributing factor,” Fox News notes.

Mullen’s mother believes the Navy has been suggesting the very opposite to imply that her son “caused his own death” through PEDs or whatnot.

Speaking with Fox News, she said she had other examples of the Navy being deceptive.

“In a different instance, Mullen said she was told her son was driven from the water in a vehicle as he completed ‘Hell Week’ but was actually seen on video being carried from the Pacific Ocean,” according to Fox News.

“The video, which was provided to Fox News Digital, shows a group of men emerging from the water onto the shore, with one person holding another SEAL candidate whom Mullen identified as her son,” Fox News reported.

“I caught them again in a completely and total lie. That’s why I keep saying the investigation is all [a] lie, because it’s the military investigating themselves,” Mullen’s mother said.

According to her attorney, Kevin Uniglicht, she strongly believes her son could have been saved had the Navy taken notice of his “clear signs of pneumonia that obviously just got worse and worse.”

“We knew that there was a problem and that they had missed properly diagnosing him on the day that he had passed away. But now we have information, and it’s even information that’s provided by the Navy, that clearly they should have known days prior,” Uniglicht told Fox News.

“So, they could have saved him on Wednesday. They could have saved him on Thursday. They could have saved him on Friday morning. And then, even when they didn’t save him those three times, later on that day, when he finished “Hell Week,” they still could have saved him and sent him to the hospital.”

In a separate interview with “Good Morning America,” Mullen’s mom repeated this refrain, saying, “They had opportunities to save my son and he’s dead because they didn’t treat him.”

Vivek Saxena
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