Second in my series of posts discouraging people from winning a Darwin Award, I bring you this link to Chris’ story of being out at Great Falls and watching the loons across the Potomac. Not the birds, but the judgment-impaired who were leaping into water they couldn’t know the depth of.
Apparently it was deep enough not to drive their hips up into their skulls, but it wasn’t free of other dangers.
Then two boys jumped and only one resurfaced (below, left). He started screaming for help and swam over to where his friend hit the water. Eventually, he found him, brought him to the surface and dragged him to the shore line (below, right).
In Florida the reasonable expectation would have been that someone got their feet tangled up in some seaweed, but I don’t know what might have caused this fellow not to surface. Could have been something as simple as hitting at a bad angle and being dazed.
As you may be able to tell from the quoted text above, Chris has some neat pictures of the jumping, including this one of one of the moment of impact in the water.
This post appeared in its original form at DC Metblogs