Army “VIP culture” led to parachute accident that killed former JBLM officer

[unhappycamper]

http://www.thenewstribune.com/2014/07/31/3311768/army-vip-culture-led-to-parachute.html?sp=/99/296/331/



Lt. Col. Darron Wright, top-right, poses with his Hook 'em Horns and the crew from his Stryker at Camp Liberty, Baghdad on Christmas Day, 2009. Wright died in a training accident Sept. 23, 2013.

Army “VIP culture” led to parachute accident that killed former JBLM officer
By Adam Ashton
July 31, 2014

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The former Joint Base Lewis-McChord officer who died in a September accident was not ready to jump with a new kind of parachute when he attempted his first airborne drill in four years, according to an Army investigation obtained by The News Tribune.

That wasn't the only mistake that contributed to the death of Col. Darron Wright, a popular senior officer who helped lead a JBLM Stryker brigade in combat and held a series of prestigious headquarters assignments at the base south of Tacoma.

Wright’s tragic fall from an Air Force C-130 plane flying 1,000 feet above the ground in North Carolina was made possible by a string of administrative oversights, according to the investigation. It was also enabled by a “VIP culture” at Fort Bragg, the Army's largest post, that allowed senior officers to make late demands on their subordinates and skip the basic safety briefings junior soldiers must attend.

“This VIP crap stops now,” Lt. Gen. Joseph Anderson, commander of the Army's XVIII Airborne Corps, fumed when he read the report on how one of his highest-ranking officers died in a preventable accident, according to an officer who was present.