ELYRIA (AP) — The cousin of a U.S. Navy sailor from Ohio says the 37-year-old man was three months shy of retiring when he was killed this weekend in a collision between a destroyer and a container ship off Japan.
Fire Controlman 1st Class Gary Leo Rehm Jr. was among seven sailors killed aboard the USS Fitzgerald on Saturday. He was from Elyria.
Brad Rehm tells The Chronicle-Telegram in Elyria that word of his cousin’s death was shocking.
Gary Rehm is survived by his wife, Erin.
He was part of a crew of nearly 300 aboard the destroyer when a Philippine-flagged container ship collided with it early Saturday. Authorities declined to speculate on a cause.
A delay in reporting the collision is under investigation.
The U.S. Navy says it still believes the collision occurred at 2:20 a.m. local time even though Japanese coast guard officials say it happened about an hour earlier.
Cmdr. Ron Flanders, a Navy spokesman, said Monday that the destroyer reported to officials that it collided at 2:20 a.m. Saturday with the Philippine-flagged container ship off the coast of Yokosuka near Tokyo. Seven American sailors died in the crash.
Coast guard officials said they have revised the time of the collision to 1:30 a.m. from their earlier estimate of 2:20 a.m. after interviewing crewmembers of the container ship, the ACX Crystal.
A track of the container ship’s route by MarineTraffic, a vessel-tracking service, shows it made a sudden turn as if trying to avoid something at about 1:30 a.m., before continuing eastward. It then made a U-turn and returned around 2:30 a.m. to the area near the collision.
“That (1:30 a.m. crash time) is not our understanding,” Flanders told The Associated Press. He said any differences would have to be clarified in the investigation.