Soldier injured during training was shot by a Special Forces soldier using a light machine gun

Editor’s note: It was originally reported that a 7th Infantry Division soldier was killed after being shot during training. This information was incorrect. The soldier is in stable condition and recovering at Madigan Army Medical Center.

An insider source has confirmed that a soldier was shot by a special forces soldier using a machine gun in Washington state.

The soldier, assigned to the 7th Infantry Division soldier at Joint Base Lewis-McChord was killed after being accidentally shot on April 25 by a 1st Special Forces Group soldier.

The “source with direct knowledge of the situation” stated the Special Forces soldier was using a M249 Squad Automatic Weapon, which is capable of firing 700–850 rounds per minute.

The training event that caused the soldier’s injury was not supposed to be a live-fire event. It was a force-on-force event where only blank rounds were supposed to be used.

The soldier was killed by live ammunition that was accidentally mixed in with blanks.

“It is prudent of us to take immediate actions now to do an internal assessment as part of a safety stand-down,” Gordon said in a statement.

All live fire training for the Army’s Special Forces units will be ceased for a safety stand-down, the Army told Military.com.

According to Maj. Russell Gordon, a spokesperson for 1st Special Forces Command, on Tuesday, Special Forces, civil affairs, and psychological operations units began a three-day safety stand-down.

Blank rounds are very different in appearance as their shell casings are crimped at the end where the bullet would be and the M249 requires an adapter that covers the end of the barrel to create enough back pressure for the weapon to work with blanks.

The weapon is mostly fired with belt-fed 5.56 rounds, which make the rounds very visible to the shooter but can also accept standard magazines, in which the rounds are concealed inside.

It is not clear how the Special Forces soldier was firing the weapon or how many live rounds they fired after the blank firing adapter was shot off the weapon.

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