Scathing report on heatstroke death of Parris Island Marine recruit blames drill instructor

Jerry Oppenheimer is a bestselling biographer and a frequent contributor to Daily Mail

The death of a US Marine recruit during a grueling training session in blistering heat was ‘likely avoidable,’ a damning internal report has concluded.

Dalton Beals, 19, died in June 2021 of hyperthermia after wandering away from the exercise – known as ‘the Crucible’ – on Parris Island, South Carolina.

He was found unconscious an hour later in a nearby field and could not be revived.

Now the blame for his death has been placed squarely on the shoulders of his senior drill instructor who ‘did not have the maturity, temperament, and leadership skills necessary to be a drill instructor,’ according to the report obtained exclusively by DailyMail.com.

And Beals’s mother, Stacie, told DailyMail in an exclusive interview: ‘For me, this individual should not be a Marine. He should be stripped of everything, dishonorably discharged, and he should be thrown in the brig.’

The drill instructor’s name is blacked out in the report, as are others who are found partly to blame for Beals’ death. Those include the company commander who ‘failed to properly address concerns.’ 

The instructor ‘demonstrated little leadership over his team, and at times appeared disinterested in leading or supervising them,’ the report says.

‘Although it is impossible to determine, his perceived indifference to the well-being of recruits demonstrated prior to the Crucible, could have impacted Recruit Beals or other recruits’ willingness to seek medical attention when Recruit Beals was clearly showing signs of heat injury during the Crucible.’

Beals, who lived in Pennsville, New Jersey, died on June 4, 2021, on the second day of the Crucible, a grueling 54-hour combat-like training event requiring physical strength and teamwork, with little food and sleep deprivation.

The Crucible is the final training event before recruits are awarded the Eagle, Globe and Anchor – a prized insignia and emblem – officially making them a US Marine. 

During the Crucible, the senior drill instructor ‘intensified training’ for Beals’s team that included ‘directing unauthorized incentive training.’

‘Those actions increased the impact of the weather conditions on Recruit Beals and other recruits in Group 2, Team 1. At the same time, [instructor] failed to adequately supervise Recruit Beals and other Group 2, Team 1 recruits, including during red and black flag conditions on Day 2.’

When black and red flags fly at Parris Island, the sprawling base in Beaufort County, South Carolina, where recruits from east of the Mississippi River have trained for generations, the trainees are ordered to stay in their barracks because of the heat.

Pfc. Beals was known as a ‘gentle giant’ who was a high school football player and wrestler beloved by his friends, family and by his fellow recruits in the Echo Company, Platoon 2040, 2nd training battalion.

Overheated, dehydrated and acting loopy, Beals had left his team after showing signs of ‘heat injury,’ and had been found unconscious on Page Field at Parris Island some 90-minutes after completing the sixth event of the Crucible in temperatures exceeding 90-degrees.

In an exclusive interview with DailyMail.com, his mother, Stacie Beals, 53, a cardiac nurse, says that as far as she knows her late son’s senior drill instructor has not been punished, though he no longer has contact with recruits. She says she wants him out of the Marine Corps and imprisoned.

‘People need to know about this,’ she says, asserting that the Marine Corps would like to ‘keep quiet’ the death of her son and the instructor who was responsible.

‘These recruits don’t need to sign their lives away when they’re trying to serve their country, and that’s what Dalton wanted to do, and he wasn’t given that chance. You shouldn’t die at the hands of your own people.’

A Marine Corps spokesman told DailyMail.com that the Beals case is under review by military prosecutors and said Parris Island leadership is in contact with his family.

‘Ultimately, our intent is to be as transparent as possible without compromising the legal processes,’ said Marine Corps Major Philip Kulczewski.

‘A request for legal services has been submitted by the Recruit Training Regiment in the case of Pfc. Beals. Currently, that case is under legal review by military prosecutors.

‘However, it would be inappropriate at this time to speculate about the details of the case with the ongoing review,’ Kulczewski added.

On June 5, 2021, the day after the Crucible, Stacie Beals says she was awaiting a call from her son, saying, ‘Hey, mom, I made it. I’m a Marine. I finished the Crucible. I got my Eagle, Globe and Anchor.’

But that call never came.

Instead, she heard a ‘knock on my door’ at 1am – a moment etched darkly in her memory.

She was starkly greeted by two uniformed Casualty Officer marines who asked if she was Dalton Beals’s mother.

‘Then they told me he was deceased,’ she said. 

She and one of her two daughters – in a state of shock – tried to question the messengers with the horrific news, but they had no details about Dalton’s death.

‘They gave us a card and said they’d be back in the morning,’ Stacie said. 

Two weeks after his death and five days before his burial, the devastated Beals family traveled to Parris Island to attend what would have been their son’s graduation ceremony from boot camp. 

It was an all-American tradition where the Marine Corps Band played Anchors Aweigh and the Marines Hymn and the newly minted ‘Devil Dogs’ dressed in blue marched proudly on the parade deck with their loved ones in the bleachers cheering.

But for Dalton Beals’s family, it was ‘really, really tough.’

‘It was a reunion with all the families from Dalton’s company, and that should have included us. We were kind of on the sidelines just watching everything,’ his mother said. 

During the highly emotional trip, Dalton’s mother went to see the barracks where her son lived during his ill-fated three months of boot camp and to meet his senior drill instructor – the most senior noncommissioned officer and mentor responsible for all of the recruits in his command. At the time she had no idea how her son had died.

‘He was very quiet,’ she remembers clearly. ‘Very polite, and he might not have known how much we knew at the time, which was very little because I had no idea what happened to Dalton until I got the report.

‘He was very apologetic and I wasn’t really sure why he was apologizing. He said, ”I hope your family doesn’t resent me.”

‘Obviously, I now know he was on a power trip. He wasn’t disciplined and not a father figure like he’s supposed to be.’

In recent meetings with commanders, Stacie Beals has learned that that instructor’s ‘rank hasn’t changed, and it’s been over a year, but he’s no longer in contact with recruits.’

‘But the longer the investigation goes on, you know, it jeopardizes things in my opinion,’ said Stacie Beals. If they’re dragging this out, why? Is it political? Is it normal? I honestly don’t know.

‘All I know is if it wasn’t for that senior drill instructor, Dalton would still be here today.’

‘I don’t know if revenge is the right word,’ she said. ‘But I want justice. I definitely want him to have the harshest penalties.’