US Navy SEAL Team 6 Member Killed In Parachute Accident

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One Navy SEAL is dead and another has been injured after colliding in mid-air during a parachute training exercise in the Arizona desert, ABC News reports.

The SEALs were doing "routine military free-fall training," according to Kenneth McGraw, a spokesman for U.S. Special Operations Command.

The incident occurred over the U.S. Special Operations Command parachute testing and training facility at Pinal Airpark, Arizona, according to CNN.

The Department of Defense said Special Warfare Operator Chief Brett D. Shadle, 31, was pronounced dead after being taken to University of Arizona Medical Center. He was a member of the Navy's Special Warfare Development Group, better known as Seal Team Six, NBC reports.

Shadel, of Elizabethville, Penn., was a father of two.

"He was just a very outgoing guy. People automatically liked Brett," Shadle's cousin, Sheri Shadle, told The Patriot-News. "He was very athletic. He always knew what he wanted to do. Since middle school he wanted to be a SEAL."

An official who released information on condition of anonymity reported that the other SEAL — an E-6 Petty Officer First Class — is in stable condition at University of Arizona Medical Center, USA Today reports.

The tragedy follows another accident at Pinal Airpark happening in 2008, when two Virginia Beach-based Navy SEALs died a month apart in similar parachute incidents. It also comes just 10 days after a training accident in Nevada, when seven Marines were killed after a mortar round exploded inside the tube.