Sailors at Naval Station Norfolk cut back trees around grass to prevent future incidents of spontaneous combustion from spreading.

NORFOLK, VA – A sailor at Naval Station Norfolk spontaneously burst into flames yesterday, according to multiple witnesses.

The sailor was moving to the Bachelor Enlisted Quarters when he suddenly and violently burst into flames upon stepping off the sidewalk and onto a field of grass while wearing his Navy Service Uniform. Bystanders were unable to offer a detailed account, as the victim was incinerated in mere moments and reduced to a smoldering pile of ashes sprinkled atop remarkably mirror-like Corframs.

The victim, identified as Seaman Apprentice Jason Walden, appeared to have intentionally cut across the grass as a shortcut to his destination. Forensic analysts speculate the tragedy could have been averted with a sharp “To the Rear, March.”

Seaman Dante Wilson witnessed the incident from the basketball court outside the barracks.

“Me and my boys were playing HORSE, and it’s time for me to make my shot, when this burst of light exploded in my periph[eral vision],” Wilson said. “I missed and demanded a redo, but the guys wouldn’t have any of it. Assholes.”

“I was walking behind him [the victim] when it happened,” added Fire Controlman Third Class Sarah Daniels. “I saw him veer off the concrete and onto the grass, and BAM! He was gone. They taught us in Boot Camp to always stay on the sidewalk when in uniform, but I never knew that would happen. Anyway, I didn’t know what to do, so I just kind of went on living my life.”

A passerby thought it strange that someone would leave a “perfectly good” pair of Corframs lying out and contacted local authorities, who established a crime scene. “At first, we had no way to identify the remains. The victim’s military ID wasn’t in his left breast pocket, as stipulated by uniform regulation. We were about to call it quits and chalk it up as another loss, when after some outside-the-box thinking and high-speed computer analysis, we found it in his wallet, two feet away from the point of detonation,” Lead Investigator Bryant Jackson of the Naval Criminal Investigation Service disclosed. Jackson refused to show the “epic montage” the NCIS team compiled while performing the investigation.

“We immediately suspected foul play,” continued Jackson. “Corframs are highly coveted, frequently stolen items with high resale value and are virtually untraceable, unless the rightful owner had the foresight to stencil their name in. However, after piecing together several eyewitness accounts and taste-sampling the ashes littered about the scene, we determined that the victim did, in fact, spontaneously combust.”

Jackson theorizes other unsolved disappearances can be linked to spontaneous combustion. At least four junior sailors over the course of the past two months have inexplicably vanished. “Think about it,” he postulates. “Nobody wants to risk being yelled at for walking across the grass in uniform. The public humiliation is unbearable. All these other freak disappearances probably occurred when nobody was looking. As tragic as the Walden incident is, his ignorance and audacity have served as a grave warning and will arguably save the lives of countless integrity violators.”

It remains uncertain whether or not Walden also had his hands in his pockets, but an examination of his iPhone activity reveals Walden played the word “poof” in “Words with Friends” seconds before his untimely death.