A recruit severely injured Friday at Marine Corps Recruit Depot Parris Island, South Carolina, appears to have intentionally jumped from the second story of a building, said Ed Buice, a spokesman for the Naval Criminal Investigative Service.





Witnesses told investigators that they saw the recruit jump, but it is too early to determine why he jumped, Buice told Marine Corps Times on Tuesday.





"The bottom line is that a young recruit was critically injured," Buice said. "NCIS wants to know how and to the extent possible, why."





The recruit arrived at Parris Island on Oct. 24 and had not yet been assigned a unit when he fell from the second story of the recruit processing center four days later. He was taken to an off-site medical facility.





The Island Packet newspaper in Bluffton, South Carolina, first reported on Tuesday that the recruit is believed to have jumped from the building.





Buice stressed that the investigation into the incident is just beginning and "witness statements are just part of an investigation."





As of Tuesday, the recruit was listed in critical condition, said Capt. Gregory Carroll, a spokesman for Parris Island. His family has asked that his name and the medical facility where he was taken not be released while he is being treated.





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Parris Island is hallowed ground for the Marine Corps, which prides itself on being able to turn civilians into Marines.





But the East Coast training depot has been at the center of a massive scandal after another recruit fell nearly 40 feet to his death in a barracks stairwell. On March 18, Raheel Siddiqui, 20, died while assigned to the 3rd Recruit Training Battalion.





An investigation into his death found that Siddiqui had threatened to kill himself days before his death, claiming he could not return to recruit training because he was being beaten by drill instructors. The investigation also determined that drill instructors in the battalion routinely slapped and choked recruits.





One of Siddiqui's drill instructor had been accused of putting another Muslim recruit in a commercial drier and insulting his religion in a prior incident.