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RESCUE It happened in an instant. I dropped my canoe paddle in the lake and as it started to float away, I instinctively reached over the side of the canoe to grab it. Bad move. In the blink of an eye I was dumped into the middle of Nuttings Lake in December with no life jacket. As I struggled to right my canoe and retrieve fishing rods and tackle boxes, the numbing cold water brought me to a stark reality. The clock was ticking. I had little time. I had to make decisions fast. My first thought was to un-swamp...

ANAHEIM, Calif. -- A Southern California man mowing his lawn fell into his backyard swimming pool with the mower and drowned. Read more: http://www.kcra.com/news/29701529/detail.html#ixzz1d2ZYHPeJ

LOUISVILLE, Ky. -- A Jeffersontown mother accused in her baby's drowning death withdrew her guilty plea after the judge denied the sentencing agreement. Geneva Walters, 25, came to court expecting to be sentenced to a punishment she agreed to. Instead, she's now facing a trial. Michael Xavier Cowherd was 8 months old when he drowned. Police charged Walters, his mother, with second-degree manslaughter and wanton endangerment. They said she gave Xavier a night-time medicine meant for adults before his bath, then left him alone in the tub. Walters took a deal and pleaded guilty to reckless homicide and wanton endangerment....

The new captain jumped from the deck, fully dressed, and sprinted through the water. A former lifeguard, he kept his eyes on his victim as he headed straight for the couple swimming between their anchored sportfisher and the beach. “I think he thinks you’re drowning,” the husband said to his wife. They had been splashing each other and she had screamed but now they were just standing, neck-deep on the sand bar. “We’re fine, what is he doing?” she asked, a little annoyed. “We’re fine!” the husband yelled, waving him off, but his captain kept swimming hard. ”Move!” he barked...

Casey Anthony’s six-week murder trial finally rested today as jurors were sent away to decide whether her two-year-old daughter was the victim of an accidental drowning that she covered up out of fear and grief, or was brutally murdered by a 'pathological liar' who wanted to live free and party. Judge Belvin Perry dispatched the jury in Orlando, Florida, to consider their verdict after the state delivered an emotionally stirring rebuttal to the defence’s closing arguments, telling the panel of seven men and five woman that Caylee Anthony died in June 2008 at the hands of 'the most well documented...

A mother who shocked America by drowning her five children in the bathtub may be freed by the end of the year, according to her lawyer. Andrea Yates systematically murdered her children, aged between six months and seven years, at her suburban Clear Lake, Texas, home ten years ago today. She then dialled 911 and told the first police officer who arrived at the house: 'I just killed my kids.'

Not just cops and firefighters, either. Spectators watched too, including his elderly stepmother, who was too frail to dive into the water herself.It took an hour. Weaver noted that a 2009 policy – revoked this week – prohibited firefighters from participating in water rescues. The policy was implemented after budget cuts ended water-rescue training. OK, I counter, but surely some first responders had been trained before 2009. Weaver’s answer: Yes, but they lacked the right equipment.Weaver assured me that the firefighters who were on the scene feel horrible about what happened. “Every one of our members who was on that...

In a case that revived memories of Susan Smith, who left her two children to drown in her sinking vehicle, police Wednesday said a mother and three of her children died after she apparently drove her minivan into the Hudson River north of New York City. One child escaped and swam to shore. The deaths occurred just moments after police in Newburgh, a small working-class city about 70 miles north of Manhattan, received a call of a domestic disturbance Tuesday at the woman's home. They responded, but not before the woman -- identified as 25-year-old Lashanda Armstrong -- had piled...

Authorities have found the bodies of three Amish children who were swept away in a creek swollen by heavy rains in southwestern Kentucky and are still searching for another child. A mother and her six children were trying to cross the creek Thursday on a roadway in their horse-drawn buggy when it overturned knocking them into the water. Authorities say the woman and two of her children escaped but four others under age 12 were missing. Paducah TV station WPSD reports that the bodies of three of the children were found Friday around 12:25 a.m. near the scene of the...

Quick thinking saves girl from Warwick pool A local teenager has been hailed a hero after saving a little girl from a swimming pool. Warwick Eagle Scout Austin Irons saved a little girl from drowning after a group of cub scouts and boy scouts finished swimming at McDermott Pool in Warwick. Austin jumped in the water to save the girl who was lying face down and helped lifeguards resuscitate the girl. "We heard shouting for lifeguards...I didn't even think. It was like, just do it," Austin recalled on the experience. He was able to get the girl out of the...

Freehold Attorney Fined $2,500 for Trapping, Drowning Squirrels

LACONIA – A Manchester teen who nearly drowned in the Winnipesaukee River this summer returned yesterday to thank a Laconia police officer and other first responders for diving in and pulling her lifeless body from the murky bottom. It was a joyful reunion for Rama Kanu, 19, of 75 O'Malley St., who came with family to thank her heroes in person. "Thank you," the petite teenager said softly as she hugged Sgt. Al Lessard and two other officers. "You are a hero," said her tearful mother, Zainab Kanu, who brought flowers to the police station. They offered thanks to Sgt....

CHARLESTON — A Charleston man is charged with unlawful neglect after deputies say one of his twin daughters walked out of their home and fell into a pond while he slept. Authorities responded to 2903 Doncaster Drive at 6:13 p.m. Thursday and found one of the 1-year-old girls neck deep in a pond behind the house. A dog was in the water with her, preventing the girl from going under, a Charleston County Sheriff’s Office incident report said. Deputies charged Adam S. Gray, 33, with unlawful neglect by a custodian after firefighters pulled the girl from the pond and took...

Say family does not have insurance to pay cost of precautionary check-upThe family of a 17-year-old Zion teen credited with saving a drowning boy on Monday in Kenosha, Wis., say the good deed has unfairly saddled them with more than $2,000 in medical bills. “He did what the lifeguard should have done — Trevor saved the boy,” Nicole Bollinger said Tuesday of her cousin, Trevor Hall. “Now the hospital phones me this morning to say that they’re sending off the bill for Trevor being taken to hospital as a precaution afterwards.

GREENWOOD LAKE — Jason Hamilton will be able to celebrate his 35th birthday on Aug. 24, thanks to the heroic actions of his 6-year-old daughter. Hamilton and his daughter, Laila Martin-Hamilton, went to swim at the Indian Park Beach about 6 p.m. Thursday. Hamilton dived into the water off a dock, hit his head on a rock and was knocked unconscious, Town of Warwick police say. He wasn’t moving. He wasn’t breathing. When his body floated to the water’s surface, Laila swam out to him. She pulled her father’s body halfway out of the water so that his head and...

6 African-American Teens Drowned In Louisiana River Monday POSTED: Tuesday, August 3, 2010 UPDATED: 7:00 pm EDT August 3, 2010 JACKSONVILLE, Fla. -- A study shows 69 percent of African-American children have low or no swimming ability. After six teens -- none of whom could swim -- drowned in the Red River in Louisiana on Monday, the importance of learning to swim and the disproportionate number of minority children who can't swim has become more evident. According to numbers gathered by the USA Swimming Foundation, nearly three out of five black and Hispanic children do not know how to swim...

SHREVEPORT, La. (AP) -- Six teenagers wading in the shallows of a Louisiana river drowned in front of their horrified families after falling into deep water. None of the teens or nearby adults could swim.

The bodies of four teenagers were pulled from a Louisiana river Monday while authorities continued to search for two more feared drowned, the Shreveport Times reported. A group of teenagers -- aged between 14 and 18 -- had been in the Red River in Shreveport for about 10 minutes, according to family members who witnessed the drownings. It was understood the youths, who did not know how to swim, were wading in the river when the bottom of the river fell away underneath them in a sudden drop. Shreveport TV station KSLA-TV reported that Cindy Chadwick, Public Information Office for...

The Instinctive Drowning Response – so named by Francesco A. Pia, Ph.D., is what people do to avoid actual or perceived suffocation in the water. And it does not look like most people expect. There is very little splashing, no waving, and no yelling or calls for help of any kind. To get an idea of just how quiet and undramatic from the surface drowning can be, consider this: It is the number two cause of accidental death in children, age 15 and under (just behind vehicle accidents) – of the approximately 750 children who will drown next year, about...

The new captain jumped from the cockpit, fully dressed, and sprinted through the water. A former lifeguard, he kept his eyes on his victim as he headed straight for the owners who were swimming between their anchored sportfisher and the beach. “I think he thinks you’re drowning,” the husband said to his wife. They had been splashing each other and she had screamed but now they were just standing, neck-deep on the sand bar. “We’re fine, what is he doing?” she asked, a little annoyed. “We’re fine!” the husband yelled, waving him off, but his captain kept swimming hard. ”Move!”...

The new captain jumped from the cockpit, fully dressed, and sprinted through the water. A former lifeguard, he kept his eyes on his victim as he headed straight for the owners who were swimming between their anchored sportfisher and the beach. “I think he thinks you’re drowning,” the husband said to his wife. They had been splashing each other and she had screamed but now they were just standing, neck-deep on the sand bar. “We’re fine, what is he doing?” she asked, a little annoyed. “We’re fine!” the husband yelled, waving him off, but his captain kept swimming hard. ”Move!”...

Claire is the three year old granddaughter of my nephew, Tim and his wife, Susie. Claire lives in Texas with her mom and dad Tiffany and Tyler. Yesterday she was found floating in a pool ... I do not know details beyond that bare and stark fact. She is now at Children's Hospital, but the family in CA is unsure if this is in Houston or Dallas. She is on the ventilater 50% of the time and off it breathing on her own the other 50%. She is on a cooling pad to keep brain swelling down if possible. Please...

ORLANDO, Fla. (AP) -- A SeaWorld Orlando trainer attacked by a killer whale died of drowning and blunt-force trauma to her head, neck and torso, an autopsy released Wednesday showed. The report by the Medical Examiner's Office ruled Dawn Brancheau's official cause of death as drowning and traumatic injuries. Her death was ruled an accident, and toxicology tests found no drugs in her system.

Searchers in La Crosse have pulled a body from the Mississippi River near where a college student disappeared a few days earlier. The La Crosse Tribune reported that police have not confirmed the identity of the body, which was pulled from the river just before 5 p.m. Tuesday. But the spot is very close to where they believe Craig Meyers fell into the river early Sunday.

ADELAIDE, Australia -- Two 8-year-old boys in a young lifeguards training program rescued a man who was struggling in the ocean off Australia's east coast. Jake Satherley told Australian Broadcasting Corp. radio that he and friend Spencer Jeams saw a middle-aged man having trouble Sunday off Northcliffe beach, in Queensland state. "We saw him put his hand up and saying, 'help, help,' so we went over to him and pulled him on our board," Satherley said Monday. The boys are part of the under-14 lifeguard training program at Northcliffe Life Saving Club. Club president David Shields said he'd never seen...

<p>MCARTHUR, Calif. — Authorities say two brothers drowned after falling into icy waters while attempting to rescue a dog that fell into a Northern California lake.</p>

A devastated father has told of the moment he had to choose between saving his wife or his son after their car plunged into a river. Stacy Horton arrived at the crash scene less than two minutes after the vehicle went into the the Whanganui River on New Zealand's North Island. He discovered wife Vanessa, 35, struggling in the murky water having escaped the sinking car late on Saturday. But their 13-year-old son, Silva, remained trapped in the vehicle 15 feet beneath the surface. Mr Horton said: 'I tried to get down and get him but I couldn't - it...

In a final call home, Army Sgt. Benjamin Sherman told his sister to tell everyone he loved them, “because I don’t know if I’ll get that chance again.” Sadly, his fears proved true. Sherman was laid to rest yesterday in his hometown of Plymouth in a funeral Mass attended by hundreds. Sherman, 21, was eulogized as a selfless soldier who did what came naturally to him when he jumped into a river in Afghanistan to try to rescue a comrade in distress. “He jumped into that river because he loved deeply, he was pure of heart, and he exhibited the...

Oct. 25, 2009— The man who made $7 billion in the Bernie Madoff Ponzi scheme, Jeffry Picower, was found dead in his Palm Beach, Fla., swimming pool Sunday. The Palm Beach Fire Department told ABC News that Picower had no pulse when fire rescue workers arrived at his oceanfront mansion after his wife called 911. She and his housekeeper pulled his body from the pool shortly after noon. No one benefited more from the Madoff scheme that Picower, according to bankruptcy lawyers who sued him and alleged he had taken out $7 billion more than he had put in. Click...

Authorities say he was found at the bottom of his Palm Beach home's pool Sunday afternoon by his wife and could not be revived...

PALM BEACH, Fla. (AP) - Jeffry Picower, a Florida philanthropist alleged to have extracted billions from Bernard Madoff's investment scheme, drowned in his pool Sunday, police said. He was 67. The former New York lawyer and accountant had been a friend of Madoff for decades. A statement from Palm Beach police said Picower's wife and a maid found the body at the bottom of the pool Sunday afternoon and rescue workers could not revive him. Picower was transported to Good Samaritan Medical Center where he was pronounced dead at about 1:30 p.m.

ORLANDO, Fla. -- Three people drowned Friday afternoon in a condominium pool in Orange County, a fire department representative said. Authorities were called to the Laurel Hills Condominiums at 7101 Balboa Drive just after 5 p.m. regarding three possible drowning victims -- an adult, a child and a teenage girl. Images From The Scene A neighbor said an adult had a key and let the three people into the fenced-off pool. The neighbor said it's common for people who live in the area to have keys to the pool. Neighbors said other children saw the people floating in the pool...

Writing for Salon this week, Alexander Zaitchik reports about Glenn Beck's connections to Washington state. glenn-beck The report, which includes references to The News Tribune's coverage of the 1979 drowning death of Beck's mother in Commencement Bay, raises questions about whether Beck is telling the truth about that tragic event: Was it suicide, as Beck claims, or was it an accident? The controversial radio and television talk show host, who stirred a furor over his branding of President Barack Obama as a "racist" earlier this year, is expected to travel to his boyhood home of Mt. Vernon this weekend to...

AUSTRALIA prides itself as the land of sand, sea and surf - but was last year home to the highest number of drownings in five years. Figures released yesterday by the Royal Life Saving Society provided an ominous warning for the summer ahead as thousands of people flock to beaches and waterways. There were 302 drowning deaths in 2008-09 - up 41 from the previous year. It comes as an investigation by The Daily Telegraph found thousands of backyard pools across the state had failed to meet basic safety requirements, with lax councils having failed to carry out safety inspections....

It is being reported that the late Senator Ted Kennedy (D-Mass) apologized for his role in the Chappaquiddick “incident” in his memoir. In the book, Kennedy acknowledged that “in some small way not entirely clear to me even 40 years later, I may have contributed to the death of Mary Jo Kopechne.” The memoir defended the late Senator’s “deferral of admission of responsibility” as “a necessary sacrifice for the national interest. My political enemies would have gladly used it to divert me from my mission to succor the indigent, the improvident, and the irresponsible during my long career of public...

Forty years ago Senator Edward "Ted" Kennedy (D-MA) attended a funeral for a 28-year-old Pennsylvania woman. Her death is eerily unremarked, mostly unremembered today, at least in mainstream media. Yet the story left untold is the tragic stuff of a Joseph Conrad novel. As a date in history, July 18 is not particularly noteworthy. Not much happened on that date since the Brits and tempestuous storms decimated the Spanish Armada in 1588. On July 18, 1969, Mary Jo Kopechne drowned in an overturned, submerged Oldsmobile in a back channel off Martha's Vineyard in Massachusetts. The anniversary of her death is...

MISSION VIEJO – A father who died in a community pool Monday was not a good swimmer and drowned after apparently drifting toward the deep end of the pool while playing with his daughter, said a neighbor who helped pull him out of the water. Mitzi Inman, 46, was at the community pool near La Mancha and Rocinante with her children when 33-year-old Binayak Bhattacharyya was playing with his 5-year-old daughter, she said. She left for five minutes with one of her children and returned to find Bhattacharyya under the water. ((snip)) Bhattacharyya's daughter was wearing a flotation vest...

Saturday, July 18th, was the fortieth anniversary of the day that Mary Jo Kopechne drowned at Chappaquiddick (an island part of Edgartown,Massachusetts) in a car driven off a bridge by Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D.-Mass.). And, still, questions linger. What did Kennedy do that night? Was he intoxicated? Why wasn’t he prosecuted? The one question still pondered by political observers on all sides: did what is known universally known as “the Chappadquiddick incident” keep Kennedy from being elected President? Clearly, it did. For younger readers who know Kennedy -- now 77 and battling cancer -- primarily as the premier voice...

A 32-year-old St. George man drowned Saturday while saving his young sons from sinking in a cold Garfield County lake. Shawn Pederson was in a paddle boat in Upper Barker Lake when he noticed that his sons, ages 5 and 7, were having trouble staying above the water as they swam nearby, according to the Garfield County Sheriff's office. Pederson jumped in and kept the boys' heads above water as he tried to get them into the boat. He yelled to J.H. Frost, his father-in-law, and to his brother-in-law, who were on the shore, and the two swam to the...

Earlier this week, ABC, CBS and NBC all noted the tenth anniversary of the death of John F. Kennedy, Jr. That Kennedy was an “icon” according to CBS’s Harry Smith, and “the Prince of Camelot” to ABC’s Chris Cuomo, a former cousin-in-law. Today marks the 40th anniversary of the death of Mary Jo Kopechne, killed July 18, 1969 after leaving a party with Senator Edward Kennedy. That night, Kennedy drove his car off a bridge, and left the scene with Kopechne still in the submerged vehicle; he did not call the police until the following morning. Over the course of...

Here is video of the speech Sen. Ted Kennedy made to try and rehabilitate himself following the death of Mary Jo Kopechne on Chappaquiddick Island after he drove her off a bridge in his car, leaving her to drown on July 19, 1969. Tomorrow will be 40 years since it happened. In this video, he says he finds his own behavior "indefensible" in waiting for hours to call authorities after getting out of the car himself, but leaving Kopechne in the car. Obviously, the entire speech was his attempt to indirectly defend himself. Below is a summary of "The Chappaquiddick...

Just past midnight on Saturday, July 19, 1969, Senator Ted Kennedy drove his black Oldsmobile sedan off a bridge on Chappaquiddick Island near Martha's Vineyard, just off Cape Cod. The Senator escaped a watery death, but a passenger in his car, twenty-eight-year-old Mary Jo Kopechne, did not.

She was plucked to safety by the crew on a building site nearby after they spotted the plight of her and her husband. The workers used a crane to lower colleague Jason Oglesbee down to lift the woman free of the water and away to safety. While they were able to rescue the woman, her husband drowned after the boat overturned on the Des Moines River, Iowa. Joe Lowe, one of the construction workers, said: "I saw the boat drift down, and he started it up and he hit the bridge base. "Then he tried to wrap it up with...

Maitland 12-year-old Austin Grady jammed his foot beneath a boulder while sliding down a mountain stream and couldn't pull free. His father plunged into the river and planted himself beside the boy. For 30 minutes, Michael Grady kept his son alive, holding the child's head above the rushing white water. Volunteer firefighters pulled the boy to safety. They could not save the father. In saving his son, Grady had gotten his own foot trapped in the rocks. Exhausted from the rescue — fighting water that was pummeling him and suffering from hypothermia — he died in the stream. Grady, 52,...

Police in Texas say a woman has died in an apparent drowning at the same swimming pool where her two children drowned less than a year ago. Police discovered 35-year-old Van Ha Stocco lying near the pool at her home in Coppell Wednesday afternoon. She was pronounced died at Las Colinas Medical Center.

A 70-year-old man who dove into the Atlantic Ocean to save two children from drowning is being hailed a hero. Charles Schulze who lives part of the year in the Renaissance II condominium on Pompano Beach was walking with a companion on the 1200 block of South Ocean Boulevard on Saturday afternoon when he saw two boys struggling in a rip current...

POMPANO BEACH — A 70-year-old man drowned in the ocean Saturday while rescuing two young boys who got caught in a rip current and rough surf off Pompano Beach, officials said. Charles Schulze carried the two boys, ages 9 and 12, almost to shore in the 1200 block of South Ocean Boulevard. At that point, onlookers jumped into the water, brought the boys onto the sand and checked them over to make sure they were all right. The boys were fine. But when the beachgoers looked back at the water, they found Schulze floating face-down, Pompano Beach Fire Rescue spokeswoman...

MOGADISHU, Somalia (Jan. 11) - The body of a Somali pirate who drowned just after receiving a huge ransom washed onshore with $153,000 in cash, a resident said Sunday, as the spokesman for another group of pirates promised to soon free a Ukrainian arms ship. Five pirates drowned Friday when their small boat capsized after they received a reported $3 million ransom for releasing a Saudi oil tanker. Local resident Omar Abdi Hassan said one of the bodies had been found on a beach near the coastal town of Haradhere and relatives were searching for the other four.

Five Sirius Star pirates drown in fight over $3million ransom By Lesley Yarranton, sundaymirror.co.uk 11/01/2009 Five of the Somali pirates who hijacked a Saudi supertanker drowned when their boat capsized as they fought over the $3million ransom. Their boat, one of a fleet used to abandon the Sirius Star after holding its 25 crew hostage for two months, overturned as they left with their share of the booty yesterday. An associate at the Somali port of Haradheere near where the tanker was held said: "The wind blew it over then sank it" Three survivors reached shore after swimming for hours,...

MOGADISHU, Somalia — Five of the Somali pirates who released a hijacked oil-laden Saudi supertanker drowned with their share of a reported $3 million ransom after their small boat capsized, a pirate and port town resident said Saturday. Pirate Daud Nure says the boat with eight people on board overturned in a storm after dozens of pirates left the Sirius Star following a two-month standoff in the Gulf of Aden that ended Friday.