Our community was rocked Sunday by a grisly boat accident. Four teens were out boating and hit a wave; two were thrown overboard. One of the two girls survived although the boat ran over her and cut her leg off.
The other girl is yet to be found … Three days later ?!? I’ve heard a rumor that her hair got caught in the propeller … but … even if she were cut severely, shouldn’t the greater portion of her body remain intact?
This is a horrible thing, heart-wrenching to see her momma and daddy day in and day out waiting on the shore for the lake to give her up to them.
The grapevine says bits and pieces of the girl are washing to the shore. It’s unbearably sad.
So I wanna shake my tiny fist at the sky and demand the lake: give her up !!
That is so terribly sad for everyone. I can’t imagine what the parents must be going through. It’s just unthinkable. It’s possible that they may never locate all parts of her. It’s also possible that there may be more downstream.
I spent Sunday afternoon with a room of graduating Seniors. One of their classmates was in a car accident Saturday morning. The last word that I heard was that he is in a coma in very critical condition.
Every parent and grandparent in that room had to have been thinking, thank God it didn’t happen to mine…
I live near Lake Michigan, which takes its share of lives every year.
Death in water is funny - it’s nothing unusual for bodies to stay under for days, weeks, or even months. Last year, a young man who fell into the Lake in January off Chicago’s Navy Pier washed up on the beach in Gary, Indiana in June.
I’m sorry to hear about this accident, and wish I could be more hopeful about the missing girl showing up. Won’t bring her back, of course, but many people find having something to bury helps them move on.
Sometimes we’ll drag for hours, have the dive team in, and still not locate the body, although the marine unit is in the water within an hour of the incident.
It was February, 13th (A Friday) 1986. It was a really nice day out for that time of year, in the fifties. So my dorm neighbor decided to bring his visiting girlfriend down to the river. I drove them since it was only a couple blocks away (For the locals: I went to Saint Thomas, and drove them to where Summit ends at the river). They were being kissy kissy, so I went on ahead to the river bluffs, and saw a plaid log floating down the river…
I learned three valuable lessons in the minutes that followed. One. If you tell someone “Don’t go down there” they will go down there. Two. Bitchy receptionist types will suddenly be helpful when you tell them exactly why you are interupting their terribly unbusy day. Three. Dead people smell bad.
After calling 911 from the seminary, I went back down to the river to wait for the cars with pretty lights. The first one to show up was the rescue squad. When the EMT jumped out with his respirator bag and started running down the hill, I didn’t have the heart to tell him he was way way too late. He walked back up the hill and told his co-worker that he should go down and give him mouth to mouth. The jokes just kept on going after that.
I really thought the SPFD would have some sort of boat or crane thing to haul out the body. So I was watching them as I was giving my report. I watched as the fireman reached up and broke off a 7 foot branch and started draaaaaaaging the guy into shore.
It turns out it was a suicide. The guy had jumped from a bridge a mile away in November. He didn’t get kicked up until the warm runoff allowed his internal gasses to build up. His name was Dennis. But I call him bob. Because that’s what he was doing when I found him.
One of our local bodies of water just washed up someone who went missing early last fall. If I count right, and didn’t miss any news stories, there is still another body waiting to be found.
Hopefully we will all do a better job of wearing our PFD’s in the future, yes? Horribly sad.
If you really want an answer, I’ll share an opinion based on limited observation… Based on autopsy photos I’ve seen, a propeller will inflict large, en echelon “S” shaped cuts across a torso but the appearance will suggest more of an encounter with a knife than a blender. Limbs or the skull may suffer detachment, as evidenced by the amputated leg involved in the accident in question, but the main body I’m guessing will remain, as you say, “intact.”
I’d be skeptical of this grapevine stuff, NinetyWt.
I don’t know if you’re hinting that she was chopped to bits, but saying that “her hair got caught in the propeller” (when they haven’t even found the body) and that “bits & pieces have been washing up on shore” sounds a lot like the local yokels running away with it.
Healthy skepticism is a good thing, and I agree that hearsay shouldn’t be accepted as fact.
The “pieces” commet came from one of the volunteer fireman, a man my husband has known and trusted for 20 years. I don’t think he meant many many tiny pieces.
The hair theory is third hand - heard from a boy who heard it from a friend’s dad, who was on the rescue scene. It’s plausible - the hair could have been found around the propellor. OTOH, maybe it’s just a rumor.
It doesn’t really matter at this point, I suppose. The coroner will proclaim a cause of death, and perhaps piece together some details - certainly enough for the public to be aware of. I’m not butting into all that personal stuff. I just thought it was weird that she seemed to “dissapear” - since then I’ve found out that I knew zero about such things.
NinetyWt, I am in your exact neck of the woods also and have been following this story. Reports in paper today say preliminary autopsy shows no sign of head trama.
I was really hoping she was killed instantly from a blow to the head from the bow of the boat, at least rather than hitting the prop?
I am sure it was over quickly for her though, God rest her soul.
Howdy Julep. I’m sorry we couldn’t have met under more pleasant circumstances.
I think everyone following this (or similar) story hopes she was spared the trauma part of it - we get all skeeved out thinking about it. Evidently the propellor ran along the other girl’s back - according to other girls who have visited her in the hospital - wounding her much like lieu described.
I’m curious to hear the full autopsy report but also terrified to read about it.
In today’s Washington Post there is an article about how dangerous a certain stretch of the Potomac River is, and how it sucks people under and doesn’t let them go for weeks or months…
