Where there is water, there is the potential for death. One of the first calls I was dispatched to involved a suicide in a canal. There was an older man who was standing in his back yard, which was next to a canal siding. His granddaughter stood watching as he looked at her, said goodbye to her, and proceeded to step off into the canal. When he failed to surface, the granddaughter ran inside to get help. It is believed that he consumed the canal water on entry to the water in an effort to hasten his drowning.
As the call pertained to water (other than a swimming pool), I was dispatched to the home to assist. There were also dive team members who were dispatched. Once on scene, we defined a search perimeter using the seawalls and float lines stretched across the waterway. Then, the divers began a linear pattern within the grid. My job was to coordinate the dive from the surface. It didn’t take very long to find the body. Had he not been found, he would have eventually floated to the surface. It was the first time several of us had done a water extraction. The removal of dead bodies from the water is like lifting 300 pounds of Jell-O with a salad fork. The body is limp and the handling is awkward at best. It took five of fire rescue and police personnel to pull him from the water. For family and friends, the day ended on a very sad but conclusive note.
Another life-ending situation occurred when a lady, finding she had been diagnosed with a terminal disease, took pills from her seaside home’s medicine cabinet and simply walked into the ocean after dark, wishing to have the tide take her away so as never to be seen again. She had left a note inside her home explaining her actions. Unfortunately for her, the current didn’t do her last wish. Instead, her body was pulled in through the inlet by an incoming tide and was trapped on some rocks underneath the Inlet Bridge.
The initial call came in during the late morning and was taken by Florida Marine Patrol. The officer from FMP got to the scene, but due to a very strong outgoing tide, realized he wouldn’t be able to handle the incident. We were just a few minutes behind his response. As we approached the area, we noticed that the bridge was absolutely jammed with people looking down on the body which was only partially submerged. Among the crowd was the police chief. It was like show time. Additionally, there was a crowd of people in the restaurant which was located waterside at the immediate north of the bridge.
I had two assistants with me on the boat, both community service officers. I did a quick assessment of the conditions and my practical familiarity of this area gave us an advantage. I told one of the CSOs to grab a hook, as we were going to snag her by her jeans’ belt loop. The officer grabbed a gaffing hook. There was the loud groaning and a few screams from the bridge crowd, which was probably assuming that we were going to hook her by her ribs or puncture her anatomy and drag her away. It didn’t help that a patron from the restaurant yelled as loud as he could “Hey waitress, could I have more ketchup with these eggs?” (It turned out that the high volume request was made by a retired New York cop having breakfast and wanting to assist “…for the benefit of the crowd.”
I told my assistant to grab a line hook so as to pacify the onlookers. He did, and we proceeded under the bridge. The recovery went picture perfect. We hooked her jeans, pulled the body loose from the rocks and pulled her on the starboard side of the craft, away from the crowd. We headed into Boca Lake and pulled her into the craft. We covered her body and took her to a dock in the lake where we met with the representatives of the county medical examiner, who took the remains away.
There was a nighttime boat accident in Pompano Beach. A group of refugees from Haiti were trying to escape their homeland and make it to the Florida shore. This was a frequent occurrence. There were times when boats would come ashore from Cuba or Haiti with people aboard seeking asylum status. Normally, these boats, often nothing more than floating wood with flotation support, would come ashore and the people would scatter. In some cases, there were businesses which would take them in and have them work illegally.
On this occasion, the boat had sunk well offshore and there were several who had died. Among the missing was an infant child. The following afternoon, we were advised that there was a floating body in our jurisdiction. We responded to a fishing boat about a mile offshore whose crew had what was the missing infant in their view. It didn’t take us long to pull the child out of the water. We initially had the child up on the fishing vessel. While it was very obvious that the child was dead, and had been for some time, I felt compelled to make it appear as though I was going through a life-saving drill. I didn’t want people believing that we were not giving 100% to anyone. It was the second time we met with the M.E.’s office at the same location.
A third time for the coroner’s office occurred when a man had been reported to the police as missing. He had left for an afternoon on a personal watercraft and failed to return. Once again, it was an early afternoon call the following day when we responded to a report of an unoccupied water vessel floating offshore. Shortly after the call went out, there was a call of a body floating in the ocean about two miles offshore within the city limits. The Florida registration number matched that of the missing person, who we had to believe, was the body in the water. As we arrived on scene, we saw the victim. As we were putting together a logistical