By Jennifer Reeger, Tribune-Review, Greensburg, Pa.
Aug. 5–Terrence Carlock told his grandmother he was heading to a community festival just blocks from his Donora home Sunday afternoon.
Debbie Carlock gave her grandson a few dollars for food and said goodbye as he hopped on his bike and left.
It was the last time she saw him.
Hours later, Carlock discovered too late that 12-year-old Terrence had ridden his bike across the Monongahela River to Webster with four other boys for a swim.
While the other boys went home to their families, Terrence drowned.
“She thought he was going to be at the festival,” Debbie Carlock’s brother, Jeff, said Monday outside the Donora home his sister shared with Terrence and his four siblings, whom she is raising. “That’s where everybody had been this whole weekend. We don’t know what took place to change his mind.”
While family members are planning a funeral and trying to piece together Terrence’s final hours, Rostraver police and the Washington County Coroner’s office know some details about the boy’s death.
Officials said Terrence was with four other juveniles swimming in the Monongahela River near the Webster Boat Club.
Terrence apparently swam too far from shore and was 30 yards out when he began to struggle.
Two friends swam out to him and tried to help, but Terrence struggled even harder, pulling the other kids under water, too.
They had to abandon their rescue attempts. In the meantime, boaters in the area noticed the boy go under the water and called 911 at 6:39 p.m.
David Yelle, a dive master with the Mon Valley Divers Rescue, Search and Recovery Team, happened to be driving less than two miles from the scene when the call came in. He was returning home from a dive team training exercise.
Yelle pulled the boy from the water at 7:08 p.m., less than 30 minutes after the 911 call and only 11 minutes after getting into the murky water with six-inch visibility.
Thanks to the witnesses in the boat, Yelle was able to locate the boy 15 feet below the river’s surface.
Dive team Commander Sam Woncheck said the divers are used to being called in after the fact to simply recover a body.
In this case, there was a chance the boy could have been saved with such a quick rescue. Woncheck said young people in particular have a good chance of surviving in cold water.
But the Mon was too warm Sunday for such a miracle for Terrence Carlock.
Jeff Carlock said his great-nephew was “very quiet and shy. He stayed outside and played a lot.”
Terrence was a typical boy who liked to skateboard, play video games and ride his bike.
“It was hard not to get along with Terrence,” Carlock said. “If you had a problem with Terrence, something was wrong with you.”
Jeff Carlock said he hadn’t known Terrence to go to the river, but he knows the boy’s grandmother had admonished him to stay away from the water in the past.
“I feel hurt for my sister more than anything because she’s the mother — she’s not just the grandmother, she’s the mother,” Jeff Carlock said.
But the lure of a free place to swim on a summer day and peer pressure may have been stronger than his grandmother’s words.
“They want to be like everybody else,” Jeff Carlock said. “They don’t want to be the one sitting on the side.”
Nobody was in the water in Webster on Monday.
But an official from the Webster Boat Club who declined to give his name said the spot is a popular swimming hole for young people.
He’s seen dozens of kids at a time swimming in the water and camping on the shores off the club’s public access ramp.
“Any given day, you’re going to have lots of kids over here swimming,” he said. “When it’s hot, even more … They look for a place to cool off. They look for something to do.”
And while there are private swimming pools in the Mon Valley, “This is free,” the boat club official said of the river. “That’s a big enticement.”
John Gourn, who lives next to the boat club, said he used to swim in the river when he was a boy.
“I did because I grew up poor,” he said.
But his four sons are forbidden from swimming in the river that runs behind their home. Instead, Gourn bought a $300 pool for them to play in.
Similar pools dot the yards of several homes along the river in Webster to keep children from currents they’re not used to.
“It’s common knowledge the river’s dangerous,” he said. “It’s constantly changing.”
But Woncheck said people shouldn’t stay away from the river out of fear. They should simply know their limits.
“What parents need to do is get their kids swimming at an early age,” Woncheck said. “Get them confident with the water, and if they can’t swim they shouldn’t go into the water without a personal floatation device.”
—–
To see more of the Tribune-Review or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/tribunereview/.
Copyright (c) 2008, Tribune-Review, Greensburg, Pa.
Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services.
For reprints, email [email protected], call 800-374-7985 or 847-635-6550, send a fax to 847-635-6968, or write to The Permissions Group Inc., 1247 Milwaukee Ave., Suite 303, Glenview, IL 60025, USA.
Comments