Just days before a firefighter recruit died during a training exercise, he told his sister he was concerned about how the instructors were treating his class. The recruits had to wear their bunker gear all day, she recalled him saying. The instructors berated them and forced them to do push-ups in the parking lot at high noon.
Then Wayne Mitchell made an eerie remark: "He said, `I don't know what's going to kill me, the heat or the gear,'" Chrissy Mitchell said.
She didn't think he was serious, but five days later, her brother was dead, overcome by heat after more than 20 minutes inside a burning makeshift cargo ship at Port Everglades.
He was abandoned by two of the three Miami-Dade Fire Rescue instructors who bailed out of the drill early. And he was separated from fellow recruits who raced straight for the door while he tried to follow the rules and complete the drill as instructed. Somehow he made a wrong turn as he crawled around searching for the exit, using a hose as a guide. The heat was so intense that it burned through his gloves and his protective clothing. No one even knew he was missing until it was too late to save him.
As painful as Mitchell's death was for his family, what's almost as painful a year later is knowing the people responsible for his death have not been held accountable. The family fears they never will be.
Broward Sheriff's Office detectives investigated the incident, but did not find criminal intent so charges are unlikely.
The Miami-Dade County Office of Safety concluded in a critical report that the fire rescue department failed to take basic safety precautions the day they sent the recruits into a training exercise with live fire, but the report did not pin responsibility on any individuals.
And a pending federal report will have recommendations for change, but the fire rescue department will not be forced to follow them. The federal report is intended as a tool for all fire rescue departments to help prevent future training deaths.
Miami-Dade Fire Chief Tony Bared got an anonymous letter more than two months before Mitchell's death warning that "the recruits are constantly mentally and physically abused" by the training bureau instructors. He has declined to comment on what actions he took as a result of the letter. After Mitchell's death he transferred all the instructors from the bureau but he did not suspend, demote or fire anyone.
The department has vowed to make changes to prevent further tragedies, but when it comes to disciplining workers, procedures need to be carefully followed and that process may not be fast enough to satisfy family members, said Fire Rescue Lt. Eugene Germaine Jr.
"Basically, Wayne's death was in vain," another sister, Melissa Johnson, said. "They just want to say, `Oops, we made a mistake,' and move on. That's not good enough for me."
A review board, made up mostly of high-ranking Miami-Dade fire officials, will look at all the reports and investigations launched after Mitchell's death, and they could take disciplinary action, Germaine said. Mitchell's family is frustrated that the group has not yet begun its work, and doubt the board will take strong action.
Germaine said the administrative review board cannot start work until Broward prosecutors turn over the homicide detectives' report. That should happen Tuesday, he said.
"They came out and said they won't file any criminal charges," said Johnson, of Port St. Lucie. "That makes no sense to me. It was negligence on their part. It's all over that [county] report."
The loss of Mitchell, 37, the only boy raised among sisters and female cousins, has left a gaping hole in his close-knit family. He was the kind of guy who loved his mother enough to call her every morning and dutiful enough to visit his grandmother every week in a nursing home.
At the time of his death, he and his wife, Nancy, were trying to have their first child.
Mitchell, a former lifeguard, was much older than most of his fellow recruits, but he used that to his advantage. He was smart, disciplined and physically fit. His classmates elected him squad leader.
The weekend before his death, he spent an evening playing games with his sister Chrissy and her son at Dave & Buster's in Hollywood. He told her the instructors treated the recruits like they were in a military boot camp.
"They belittled them, they basically wanted them to quit," she said. "And one thing my brother will not do is back down, no matter what."
Mitchell's mother vacillates between anger and anguish when she talks about the loss of her son.
"They took something very precious that I'm never going to get back," she said.
Wilcox would like a chance to do to them what they did to her son.
"I'd like to suit them up and have them turn on the fires at a facility they've never been in and then send them through on their hands and knees and see how well they did," she said.
Miami-Dade County reached a yet-to-be disclosed financial settlement with Mitchell's widow in May, but that is little consolation to her and no consolation to the rest of his family. Nancy Mitchell has declined to be interviewed.
"They need to make a lot of changes," Johnson said. "A lot of people need to be gone. This was something that just should have never happened. ... They had lives in their hands and they let one go."
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