Sandy Hook Beach drowning. 15 year old boy dies after getting caught in rip in beach with no lifeguard with sign specifically forbidding swimming at the location.
A 15-year-old boy drowned and five other people were pulled from the water at an unguarded New Jersey beach over Memorial Day weekend after getting caught in a rip according to reports.
The teen, whose name was not released, was swimming in a section of Sandy Hook Beach without lifeguards on duty shortly after 4 p.m. Sunday when bystanders heard a mother screaming that she could not see her son in the surf, ABC News reported.
Bystanders and lifeguards from nearby sandy stretches raced to the scene, plucking swimmers from the water, including the distressed teen.
‘People jumped in the water’ to grab the swimmers, witness Luis Sanchez told the outlet. ‘And then there was one missing that they couldn’t get.
‘They [eventually] pulled him out, they started giving him CPR, and they couldn’t get [revive him].’
The incident happened at Beach B, one of several areas at the Gateway National Recreation Area in Monmouth County, where officials said there are signs warning beachgoers that lifeguards were not on duty at that particular site along with signs forbidding swimming.
‘When it’s windy, the weather is like this, you get rip tides, and you can easily drown,’ Sanchez noted.
‘It was on a lot of news and phones that there was rip current and stuff, and people still try to press it,’ Dan George, nearby Long Branch chief lifeguard told CBS News.
Measure to introduce water safety education bill fails to be pushed through
One of the five swimmers who survived refused medical attention, while the others were taken to Monmouth Medical Center in Long Branch and Jersey Shore University Medical Center in Neptune, the Asbury Park Press reported.
The conditions of the other swimmers were not immediately available.
New Jersey Assemblyman Sean Kean has unsuccessfully tried to push a bill requiring water safety education to grades K through 12.
‘If you start getting instruction when you’re in kindergarten, by the time you’re in high school, you’re going to really have some knowledge or training,’ Kean told CBS News.
To date the council person’s initiative has not been taken on.
Last year, at least 28 people drowned in rivers, lakes and the ocean in New Jersey.
