Five Marines suspended during drowning inquiry
One other Marine given desk duty during investigation
(CNN) -- Five Marines have been suspended and another put on administrative duty during an investigation into the drowning of a recruit in a training pool at Parris Island, South Carolina, a Marine Corps spokesperson said Saturday.
Recruit Jason Tharp died February 8 from what the Marines described as "complications in the water," a day after a camera crew from WIS-TV in Columbia, South Carolina, shot video showing a drill instructor grabbing and striking him during a training session.
Military personnel are suspended in cases of suspected wrongdoing, which can include failing to report code-of-conduct violations to the proper authorities, the Marine spokesperson said. The suspended Marines were put on desk duty.
A swim instructor who was not suspended was also moved to administrative duty, the spokesperson said.
The TV crew was at Parris Island to report on basic training when it caught a tense moment between Tharp and a drill instructor. Another instructor told the crew that Tharp had been refusing to train.
Tharp's parents told WIS-TV that their son, who joined the Marines to earn money for college, was miserable and wanted to quit.
Although they said they were not certain there was any connection between his death and what happened on the tape, Tharp's parents were upset by the way their son was being treated. They also said he did not swim well.
A Marines spokesman at the Pentagon said the actions by the drill instructors seen in the video appear to violate regulations for dealing with recruits, an assessment backed up by an outside expert.
"Basically, you're not supposed to lay your hands on a recruit," said Eugene Fidell of the National Institute of Military Justice. "You don't really want to have drill instructors grabbing a recruit by the collar, which is what happened here, and you don't want to have them hitting them with elbows."
