Active Duty Deaths

 Spec. Taylor Hannah

Branch: Army

Rank: E-4

Age: 23

From: Napa, California

D.O.B.: April 24, 1997

D.O.D.: March 1, 2020

Location: Korea

Taylor Hannah was a specialist on deployment in Korea when he failed his first PT test. He was almost 2 years enlisted and had gone through a full year of Advanced training in Intelligence. He had gone through the rigorous testing to receive his top-secret clearance. He was 6’1”, 210 lbs of pure muscle and had never been seriously sick his entire life. He worked out 3 times a day and ate extremely well. He went to the clinic on December 3, 2018 with a “rash” that had developed just after he arrived in Korea. He was transferred to a Civilian Hospital shortly thereafter and received a series of blood transfusions and a bone marrow biopsy. He was initially diagnosed with a rare blood disorder called Aplastic Anemia. Later on it was determined by his doctors that Taylor developed this disorder from the vaccines he received to deploy to Korea.

After the initial diagnosis, the Korean doctor instructed Taylor that he was severely immunocompromised and needed to be shipped home to the US immediately for official diagnosis and urgent treatment. However, for more than a month, Taylor was neglected and failed by his command in Korea by not immediately evacuating him for treatment. He was unable to perform his job, yet not flown home. In order to keep him alive, he was being transported 2.5 hours each way to the Korean Civilian hospital, sometimes without a translator, to receive blood transfusions. These transfusions were necessary every 5 days. During this month, while being in the general military population despite his weakened immune system, Taylor contracted a bacterial infection (possibly strep throat) and was hospitalized for a handful of days.  His Mom finally got to speak to his command over the phone on January 3rd (a month after he first went to the clinic) and pressed them for when her son was to be flown home, and his flight was booked shortly thereafter. She asked them how they intended to protect him with his compromised immune system, and they said, “They were on it.” Taylor was finally flown back to the US on January 6th, 2019. His command made the horrible decision to fly him commercially instead of military, sending him on 4 different flights, severely compromising his immune system with exposure to hundreds of people. In addition, Taylor was flown without an escort or nurse and had not received his life saving blood transfusion in 8 days because “there was no one to transport him”. 

Not surprisingly, on one of these 4 commercial flights, Taylor caught a secondary rare and severe infection called Pyomyositis, which is an infection of the muscle tissue, somewhat similar to Necrotizing Fasciitis, wherein the muscle tissue dies and continues to spread. When his mom received him at the airport in El Paso, Taylor was on the brink of death. She rushed him to the ER and they quickly found out his command in Korea had failed him once again by sending him to the wrong location. Because his condition was so serious, there were only 3 places in the world that Taylor should have been flown, and El Paso was not one of them. Within 24 hours Taylor was flown to Brook Army Medical Center in San Antonio, where they properly diagnosed and began treating his two illnesses. Because he had caught the Pyomyositis, his main treatment for Aplastic Anemia, which is similar to Leukemia in terms of treatment, had to wait until he went through 16 surgeries to clean and debride his dead muscle tissue out of his leg. 

Taylor’s fight was just beginning after all of those surgeries. He still had to find a donor for his bone marrow, get a transplant, and hope that nothing else took hold of his immune system and killed him before he could get treatment. Taylor went through nearly a year and a half of horrible treatments where he spent more time in the hospital than out of it. He had to learn to walk again after all of the surgeries on his leg; he went through multiple chemotherapy treatments and radiation, he had a stem cell bone marrow transplant and developed sepsis the night of the transplant, sending him to the ICU once again; he developed Graph versus Host disease of the gut, losing weight down from 210 lbs to 118 lbs; he developed Kidney failure due to all of the medications; went into cardiac arrest in December 2019 and was resuscitated; developed Transplant Associated Thrombotic Microangiopathic Hemolytic Anemia which caused heart, kidney and neurological problems; was in the ICU 16 times throughout his journey, at one point on Ecmo and Rotoprone for 5 days in a medical coma; lost all cognitive neurological functioning for nearly a week in January 2020. Had Taylor received the proper protocol of transferring him immediately to the US upon diagnosis in Korea, Taylor’s US doctors and families believe his suffering would have been immensely less, and he may have had a chance to receive the proper bone marrow transplant had they not needed to work so hard to stabilize him and save his life upon his return.

Taylor was in the process of medically retiring from the military so that he could come home to California and continue his treatments, hoping for a bright future. He needed to be transferred to a rehab facility that would teach him to walk again as he had been in a hospital bed for too many months and his muscles had atrophied. Unfortunately, Taylor succumbed to his illness and went into cardiac arrest for the second time on February 29, 2020. His ICU medical staff tried unsuccessfully to resuscitate him for 80 minutes. He died on March 1st, 2020. He left behind his mom, who he was extremely close to, and his two little brothers that he treated like his own kids. He fought hard to stay alive for his family, including his extended family of grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins, who all love and miss him very much!

Taylor was extremely smart and fun-loving. He adored music and even sang for the medical staff on the day of his transplant. He was very talented in his intelligence field (one of only 1000 people in the world trained to do what he did!). He spoke English, Spanish and was becoming fluent in Japanese. He loved building intricate Japanese Models called Gundams. He taught himself piano & guitar and was an incredible dancer. His loss is enormous and absolutely did not need to happen had his unit protected him and cared for him in Korea the way they were supposed to.

 MSgt. William Cornett

Branch: Airforce

Rank: Master Sargent

Age: 32

From: Missouri

D.O.B.: June 24, 1981

D.O.D.: October 9, 2013

Location:  Misawa Air Force Base 

 On September 19, 2013 MSgt. Cornett underwent a tonsillectomy at the Misawa Air Force Base Hospital. Following the directions of his post-op discharge instructions, MSgt. Cornett reported back to the hospital with complaints of spitting up bright red blood, fever, and night sweats on 9/22/13. His vital signs were taken; a student looked at his throat, and called a specialist by telephone for a consultation.  Despite his heart rate and blood pressure being significantly elevated above his pre-op vital signs, he was discharged without any lab work and told to come back if he became worse.

Less than five hours later, MSgt. Cornett reported back to the base hospital and was taken back for emergency surgery to stop the bleeding. Without being connected to a cardiac monitor, the medical team attempted to establish an airway multiple times. During these attempts MSgt. Cornett’s lungs filled with blood and he went into cardiac arrest. A code Blue was called.

After 9 minutes, numerous cardiac drugs, and still no cardiac monitor in place, an emergency airway was finally established. During these 9 minutes, MSgt. Cornett suffered from an Anoxic Brain Injury due to the lack of oxygen to his brain. He was transferred to a Japanese hospital where he remained in a persistent vegetative state on life support until he passed away on October 9, 2013 from the brain injury sustained.

Upon reviewing MSgt. Cornett’s medical records and learning of the above details, it became apparent that the medical team was underqualified and did not follow the proper standards of care. Not only did his medical records at the Misawa Air Force Base hospital have him classified as a single black male, it was also discovered that the student signed his credentials as the Admitting Doctor and the specialist that was consulted by telephone during the initial visit was not a physician at all, but is licensed as a “General Practice Dentist” according the National Provider Identifier (NPI). The dentist lists himself as the Attending Physician, a Surgeon, and a Chief Medical Examiner.

Had MSgt. Cornett received the proper standards of care, he would not have been sent home when he first sought treatment without lab work, which later identified he did indeed have significantly elevated white cell count. He would not have had someone “practicing as a nurse anesthetist” make multiple attempts at establishing an oral airway while he was in cardiac arrest and he would not have had a dentist perform an emergency airway. MSgt. Cornett’s death was a result of sheer medical negligence.

Unless we make a stand, these tragedies will continue to destroy military families. 

 tps://www.stopmilitarymedicalnegligence.org/msgt.-cornett.html