Victim Was Ineligible for Marine Bouts : Prior Concussions, Glasses Are Conditions Banned by Corps’ Rules

A recruit who died of injuries suffered in an Aug. 2 boxing match at the Marine Corps Recruit Depot was allowed to fight despite having a history of head injuries and wearing glasses full-time to correct nearsightedness.

Both conditions are specifically mentioned in a 1985 “regimental order” as reasons to disqualify Marines from boxing in the informal bouts at the end of their 11-week boot camps in order to prevent injury.

Conditions Reported Earlier

But organizers of the bouts may not have known that 18-year-old Pvt. Paul Resce Jr. had told a physician of his prior head injuries during his May enlistment physical. According to Marine Corps spokesman Maj. Jerry Broeckert, bout officials did not check medical records on file at the recruit depot before allowing Resce to compete.

A judgment call apparently was made to allow Resce to fight despite his nearsightedness, Broeckert said.

Resce collapsed after receiving a blow to the head in the third round of the Aug. 2 bout. He died of brain damage five days later at the Navy Hospital in Balboa Park, where he had been on life-support equipment.

The dead Marine’s older sister, Rosie Britton, said Thursday that because the information was available before the bout, “It’s very frustrating to know that (the accident) could have been avoided. All they needed (to say) was ‘Son, you’re not qualified; you can’t fight.’ ”

The Marine Corps has suspended the informal “boxing smokers” while Lt. Col. Kenneth Sandstrom conducts an investigation into Resce’s death and procedures governing the bouts. The results are due about Sept. 1.

Separate Inquiry Started

At the request of Resce’s father, Paul Resce Sr., of Romeoville, Ill., a congressman has launched a separate inquiry. The Marine Corps’ January, 1985, regimental order lists five conditions for barring a Marine from participating in a boxing match.

They include “if he has a history of head injuries” and “if his vision is impaired and he cannot see well without contact lenses or glasses.”

Resce said Thursday that his son suffered two concussions in October, 1986, while playing football for Joliet Catholic High School in Joliet, Ill. One of the injuries put his son in the hospital overnight.

Resce’s football coach, Jim Boyter, said the first injury was called a concussion by a physician at the hospital. The same doctor diagnosed Resce’s second concussion on the sidelines of a Friday night game, Boyter said.

Broeckert said Thursday that Resce had reported the head injuries during his May enlistment physical in Illinois and that the medical records were available to Marine Corps officers at MCRD at the time of the fight.

But the records were not checked prior to the bout because procedures governing the bouts do not call for it, Broeckert said.

Instead, boxers are interviewed about possible medical problems during a safety lecture the day of the boxing matches. The inquiry will seek to determine whether Resce was asked about the head injuries and revealed them at that time, Broeckert said.

Broeckert also said that Resce’s superiors knew that he wore glasses but allowed him to fight anyway.

‘Aware He Wore Glasses’

“We were aware he wore glasses,” Broeckert said. “He did fight. Should he have fought? That’s one of the questions the investigating officer is going to look at.”

Britton, Resce’s sister, said Marine Corps knew that Resce was nearsighted, because he was ordered to exchange his contact lenses for Marine-issue black glasses when he began boot camp.

A drill instructor present at the fight later told the family that he knew the younger Resce well from working with him throughout boot camp, Britton said.

“He was wearing glasses all through training. I would assume” he wore them all the time, Britton said. “He would need them for rifle shooting, to see long distances. He was nearsighted. He wore (the contact lenses) all the time. He needed them to see.”

Broeckert has said the bouts are closely supervised. No man is permitted more than a 10-pound weight advantage or a 6-inch reach advantage over an opponent. Fighters wear headgear, and a bout is terminated in the event of a cut or a knockdown.

Despite such safeguards, opponents of boxing include the American Medical Assn., which has dedicated itself to “the elimination of both amateur and professional boxing, a sport in which the primary object is to inflict injury,” according to an AMA spokeswoman at the organization’s Chicago headquarters.

The younger Resce was knocked unconscious during the third round of his three-round fight, when he took a blow to the head, lost his balance and began to fall backward before collapsing in the arms of the referee.

Wrote Prophetic Letter

His father said Thursday that Resce had written “an ironic letter” home about two weeks earlier to say that he was going to be in a boxing tournament. The letter read, in part: “I’m going to get killed. But what the heck. I’m going to try.” The 18-year-old was buried Aug. 14., the day he was to have graduated from the Marine training program.

The elder Resce added that he has not contacted a lawyer and will not consider legal action until Sandstrom’s report is completed.

Britton said, “There’s nothing we can do about my brother. But there’s a lot of kids who go in and out of there. Maybe something could be done to avoid hurting another kid. We’d hate for another family to go through what we have.”

“I just try to prevent anybody from getting hurt,” said Resce, who was born in Italy and speaks halting English. “If they make a mistake, I just want them to come forward and say they make a mistake.”

But at Resce’s request, U.S. Rep. Jack Davis, R-Ill., has launched the separate inquiry.

Claiming that the younger Resce volunteered to fight two weeks before the bout, Davis wants to know “why weren’t there some questions asked or some records checked so it would be known that he wasn’t qualified to participate,” said Patricia Neale, a case worker for Davis.

“If they did do that, I think the records would have indicated that he wasn’t eligible to participate,” she said.

The younger Resce, a defensive captain on the Joliet Catholic football team and shortstop on its baseball team, enlisted as a Marine reservist out of a sense of adventure just after his May 21 graduation, his older sister said.

“He really didn’t know what college he was going to go to. It was a challenge. He was 18. California sounded exciting to him. He was really into physical fitness. For him, it was the whole physical fitness thing more than anything.”