7 U.S. Navy Sailors Killed in Collision Identified

The U.S. Navy has confirmed that all seven sailors who went missing after the USS Fitzgerald collided with a container ship in Japan this weekend were found dead. Their bodies were recovered in flooded berthing compartments on the ship, authorities said. They were identified late Sunday as Dakota Kyle Rigsby, 19, of Virginia; Shingo Alexander Douglass, 25, of San Diego; Ngoc T. Truong Huynh, 25, of Connecticut; Noe Hernandez, 26, of Texas; Carlos Victor Ganzon Sibayan, 23, of California; Xavier Alec Martin, 24, of Maryland; and Gary Leo Rehm Jr., 37, of Ohio. Vice Adm. Joseph Aucoin, the commander of the Navy’s 7th Fleet, praised the actions of the surviving sailors. “Heroic efforts prevented the flooding from catastrophically spreading, which could have caused the ship to founder or sink,” he said. Many of the 300 crew members on board the ship at the time of the crash on Saturday, he said, would have been sleeping when the ship was flooded, and “there wasn’t a lot of time” for people to get out. Three crew members, including the ship’s captain, Cmdr. Bryce Benson, are being treated for injuries.