A 40-year-old Army staff sergeant training to be a drill sergeant was found dead after failing to return from a land navigation course at a South Carolina military base.
Search crews found Staff Sgt. Jaime Contreras nearly 11 hours after he was supposed to have completed the three-hour course Monday at Fort Jackson near Columbia.
Contreras was only about 50 meters (164 feet) off the course “but that is very unforgiving terrain,” said Maj. John Farrell, the director of Emergency Services at the Army’s largest training base.
