Soldier from Fort Hood dies while trying to jump a draw bridge in Lithuania

Army officials confirmed on Tuesday that a soldier from Fort Hood has died during an accident in Lithuania.

On Thursday morning, Staff Sgt. Robert Magallan, 29, who was assigned to Fort Hood’s 11th Signal Brigade, died while on temporary duty status, John Tomassi, spokesman for U.S. Army Europe and Africa said.

“An investigation has been initiated to determine the circumstances that led to the incident,” Tomassi said in a statement to the Herald. “We are in direct coordination with our host nation counterparts as we continue the investigation process. Our thoughts and condolences are with the family and friends of Staff Sgt. Magallan.”

While the Army did not offer many details about the incident, the Baltic Times reported the soldier “based in Latvia died after his car fell off a drawbridge into a river in the Lithuanian port city of Klaipeda.”

The soldier was seemingly off duty and drove a rented car from Latvia to a hotel in Klaipeda, the Times reported.

The accident occurred when he was driving over a bridge where the drawbridge was up and the barrier was down.

According to a Lithuanian news source, a video shared on social media shows a vehicle moving back and forth before crashing through the safety barrier and falling into the water below.

(Video of the accident is below)

Local first responders were able to eventually recover his body. He was wearing civilian clothes when he they found him.

“When they arrived, the car was not visible in the water, the divers dived in and saw that the car had rolled over on its roof, there was a body of a man on the driver’s side. The divers flipped the car in the water, pulled out the man and marked the location of the sunken car,” a spokeswoman for the Fire and Rescue Department said.

“The male victim was pulled out and handed over to the police. The car was left in place due to darkness, and today [Thursday] extraction work will be carried out,” Igoris Voveris, chief specialist at the Situation Coordination Subdivision of the Fire and Rescue Department said.

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