(CALIFORNIA) — A U.S. soldier died earlier this month after being struck by an M2 Bradley fighting vehicle during a large-scale training exercise in California, an Army spokesperson said.
Adrian Bonsey, 29, was a combat engineer assigned to the 3rd Infantry Division at Fort Stewart in Georgia.
Bonsey was on foot June 10 in a training area in the Mojave Desert during hours of limited visibility when he was run over by the 27-ton armored vehicle at about 4:30 a.m., the spokesperson said. The incident remains under investigation.
“This is a devastating loss for our entire division,” Maj. Gen. John Lubas, the 3rd Infantry Division commander, said in a statement. “Adrian was an exceptional soldier who was committed to our mission and proudly serving our nation. We are heartbroken and will wrap our arms around his family, loved ones and fellow Soldiers during this difficult time.”
Bonsey, a New York native, joined the Army in 2023, and was stationed at Fort Stewart for two months, the Army said. He previously served at Fort Carson, Colorado, and deployed to Poland in 2024.
The Bradley is manned by a three-soldier main crew and built to carry six additional troops into combat while providing fire support with its 25mm chain gun and M240C 7.62mm machine gun. It is also armed with TOW anti-tank missiles. The vehicles were heavily relied upon during the early years of the Iraq war.
Bonsey was taking part in a significant training exercise at the National Training Center, located in the Mojave Desert, the Army’s premier combat training venue, where units spend about a month conducting large-scale exercises designed to replicate war conditions. The rotations serve as the Army’s final validation before units are considered ready for potential combat deployments abroad.
The Army lost 31 soldiers in training accidents in 2025, with fatalities split between aircraft crashes and ground incidents, Army figures show. Most of the ground deaths involved military vehicles, often in rollover incidents.
Since 2020, the service has averaged roughly two vehicle-related fatalities each month, but have been on a downward trend since the mid-2000s when deaths were triple, coinciding with frantic scrambles to train units to pour them into the Iraq war surge.
Army investigations have repeatedly pointed to the same factors contributing to fatal training incidents including sleep deprivation, inadequate training and inexperienced leaders supervising high-risk exercises. In some cases, commanders overseeing the training had only recently assumed their positions, the investigations found.
Copyright © 2026, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.
