A Massachusetts State Police trainee whom officials have said was seriously injured during an exercise at the academy on Thursday has died, according to his family.
The family tells NBC10 Boston and Telemundo Nueva Inglaterra that Enrique Delgado Garcia, whose dream was to be a state trooper, was hurt during a boxing training exercise.
NBC10 Boston and Telemundo Nueva Inglaterra have reached out to state police for more information.
A Massachusetts State Police trainee was sent to the hospital in a training exercise; authorities say. His family says they were told he was hurt in a fight.
State police said earlier Friday that the recruit, a member of the 90th Recruit Training Troop at the Massachusetts State Police Academy in New Braintree, “became unresponsive” during a defensive tactics training exercise on Thursday. The academy’s on-site medical team, which includes staff from UMass Memorial Medical Center in Worcester, immediately responded and rendered aid.
The medical team determined that urgent medical care was required, state police said, and the trainee was brought by ambulance to a local hospital, where he was still being evaluated as of early Friday afternoon. No update on his condition was released Friday.
State police said more details would be provided as they become available. They didn’t identify the trainee or share more on the kind of training exercise the trainee was involved in.
The father of the injured man told NBC10 Boston that his 25-year-old son was at the hospital with a skull fracture and brain damage after multiple blows to the head.
The man’s father, whom NBC10 Boston is not identifying, said he’d been told that he was injured in a fight at the academy Thursday, but wasn’t told more information, including what kind of fight it was or with whom. The trainee had been at the state police academy for three months and was set to finish in two weeks.
The Worcester County District Attorney’s Office said they were reviewing the incident and noted that the trainee, whom they did not identify, had worked at the office.
“Our office’s thoughts and prayers are with he and his family at this time,” a representative said in a statement.
Security analyst Todd McGhee lobbied to bring the program back when he was a member of the state police, though with the understanding it wasn’t going to be, as he put it, “a cowboy event.”
“They had to have protocols, they had to have conditions placed within it for safety reasons,” he said, adding that it would be important to see what safety protocols were in place, and if they were being followed, as Thursday’s incident was being investigated.