Not Sure How You Miss This

Apparently a body was found in the water at a public swimming pool. This is not unusual, given that drownings happen in pools all the time. What is unusual, and almost unbelievable, is that the body was in there for several days. Apparently while the pool was open:

Police say lifeguards were on duty and people were swimming in the Veterans Memorial pool at Lafayette Park Sunday, Monday and Tuesday and it appears no one noticed the dead body.

I spent a lot of time at the local public pool as a kid, and I’m not sure how, even playing a game of Marco Polo, you’d miss a stiff floating next to you. What about the lifeguards? OK… well, even if your lifeguard is busy smoking dope or flirting with girls, you have a pool man who cleans the pool right? Right?

As of this hour, the entire staff of the Veteran’s Memorial Swimming Pool in Fall River has been placed on administrative leave.

I’d call that a start.

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13 thoughts on “Not Sure How You Miss This”

  2. When reached for comment a TSA spokesperson beamed, “We’ve have found him in 24 hours tops!”

    It’s expected that the TSA will have a tough run for their money at the MUGO (Most Useless Government Outfit) awards this year. A first since their inception.

    Now to Frank for the weather…

  3. You miss this because DA Sutter (quoted in the news story) is too busy persecuting lawful gun owners who used firearms to defend themselves under a zero tolerance gun policy and so the people who run the craphole that is Fall River skate by without any oversight.

    Caught without a LTC/FID in Bristol county (where fall river is located…)? You will be held for a dangerousness hearing and you will be held without bail pending trial for possessing a constitutionally protected item.

    Welcome to Massachusetts…

  5. The only thing I can figure is she went under, and sucked on to the filter intake grate, which broke up her outline enough that it wasn’t readily visible from the surface. After a few days, her body would fill with enough gas to overcome the suction and come to the surface and be noticed.

  7. She was definitely down on the bottom, but I am not sure she needed to be up against a filter grate to stay there. If she was skinny enough, she could have stayed down there until gasses built up enough to push her up. This was a slide pool so the depth may have been as much as 18ft. These pools are from the 30s or older when 12ft and 18ft diving boards where available at public pools. A lot of them are very deep as a result. At 18ft, it is very possible that water didn’t circulate much at the bottom. Given the age of these pools, it may not have had a drain at the bottom which is why the water may have been murky enough to disguise her presence. The schools have just let out up here and the pools are heavily utilized with the hot weather.

    I was a lifeguard when I was younger, it’s amazing what is possible when you mix water and inexperienced swimmers.

  9. Pingback: Floater | Weer'd World

  10. This has been the local news story of the day. I’m starting to think she was killed and dumped there.

    The state health inspectors were there at the pool for 2 of the three days
    http://boston.cbslocal.com/2011/06/30/state-closes-all-30-deep-water-pools-after-body-goes-unnoticed-for-days/

    I MIGHT be able to believe some lazy teen just never looked into the pool during the times before and after operating hours to notice a dead human, but that’s a stretch. Health inspectors I suspect would notice a Baby Ruth in the pool, let alone a corpse.

  11. Zoom in on the map to Layafette Park and you’ll see the pool. The 12ft deep section has a black bottom from what I see. I could understand how a dark skinned body could be hard to see resting on the dark bottom through 12ft of water (given that its murky from over chlorination).

    Although, how the heck did no one notice it over the course of two days? How would guards lose track of a fully grown adult in the pool? In my experience kids of every age cross the bottom of the deepest pool fairly regularly, with goggles to increase visual clarity. Also, its common for guards to clean and spot check, under and over water, all the sections of the pool on a daily basis.

    I don’t or want to believe that could happen so I’m leaning towards a body dump.

    Veteran’s Memorial Swimming Pool (in Lafayette Park)
    Eastern Ave
    Fall River, MA

    http://maps.google.com/maps?hl=en&cp=14&gs_id=14&xhr=t&q=eastern+ave+fall+river+ma&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.&biw=1006&bih=759&um=1&ie=UTF-8&hq=&hnear=0x89e4f93b716210e3:0xc1a10fb8f266394f,Eastern+Ave,+Fall+River,+MA&gl=us&ei=Js4MTseFLOSIsgLWw4yPCg&sa=X&oi=geocode_result&ct=title&resnum=1&sqi=2&ved=0CBkQ8gEwAA

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