Eighteen soldiers with the 6th Ranger Training Battalion have been temporarily suspended as instructors pending the outcome of an investigation into a May 16 incident in Florida, during which they allegedly fired blank rounds from their weapons at a public beach, said Jennifer S. Gunn, a spokeswoman for the Army Maneuver Center of Excellence at Fort Benning, Georgia.
Currently, the Ranger instructors cannot train students going through the final stage of the U.S. Army Ranger Course at Camp Rudder, located on Eglin Air Force Base, Florida, Gunn told Task & Purpose on Thursday.
The 6th Ranger Training Battalion runs the swamp phase of the Ranger Course, but is not within the 75th Ranger Regiment.
The May 16 incident at Crab Island in Destin, Florida, led to at least two 911 calls and several social media posts. Videos posted on social media showed men in military uniforms with Ranger tabs and blank adapters on their weapons firing at least two bursts into the air.
In one of the videos, a woman who is off camera can be heard shouting after the first burst, “Is that real?”
Michael Ingram, a charter boat captain who was at Crab Island at the time, told Task & Purpose that the soldiers did not give any advance warning that they intended to fire their weapons, prompting several boaters to take cover.
“This is unacceptable because there are so many real mass shootings going on in America each year,” Ingram told Task & Purpose for a previous story. “You can’t be joking about it.”
Gunn confirmed that the suspended Ranger instructors participated in the Billy Bowlegs Pirate Festival, which was held on the evening of May 16 at nearby Fort Walton Beach.
The festival included a mock sea battle, in which the Rangers fired blanks while riding in small boats to “capture” Billy Bowlegs.
“This was the only approved festival activity that involved the Army Rangers firing their weapons,” Devon Ravine, a spokesman for the city of Fort Walton Beach, told Task & Purpose on Monday. “The pirate festival, he said, was about five miles from Crab Island. “We do not know what occurred at Crab Island on Friday, and cannot comment, except to say that it was not in any way a part of the Billy Bowlegs Pirate Festival.”
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