The Milwaukee County Sheriff’s Office and family on Sunday, July 19 identified a 19-year-old man who drowned in Lake Michigan Saturday night while trying to save two children. Family said Jvarius Bankhead was in town from Mississippi to visit his father, and a trip to the beach turned tragic.
Lin Chia-he, an endurance swimmer, completed the first single-day round-trip Turtle Island swim. From Yilan”s Wushih Harbor to the shores of Turtle Island and back is roughly 20 kilometers and takes a motorized boat about one hour. The feat took nearly 13 hours in the water with only a 40 minute rest on the island.
While kayaking on the Waccamaw River in North Carolina, Peter Joyce was suddenly charged by a submerged alligator. At the 0:50 mark in the above video, the gator rammed the kayak and flipped Joyce over for a few seconds before he was able to right himself.
Most adults who drown in open water “knew how to swim and exceeded or overestimated their swimming abilities,” said the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which recently reported an upsurge of deaths at lake and river projects managed by the agency.
“Most people learn to swim in a pool where they can easily reach the sides or push off the bottom when they need to take a break,†the agency noted.
“There are no sides to grab onto in open water and the bottom can be several feet below you,†said the statement, which noted swimmers can encounter an unexpected drop-off  “just a few feet away†from a shoreline.
It also said exhausted swimmers may black out due to improper breathing.
“Shallow-water blackout often happens to people who know how to swim well because they deny their body’s desire to inhale for too long,†the agency said. “Once someone loses consciousness water enters the lungs, causing them to drown.”
In addition, it said, some people “don’t think about survival floating when they panic.”
The Corps said more than 30 people had drowned at sites under its management in June, an increase of almost 50 percent from a year earlier. It said “nearly all” the drowning victims were men “and were not wearing a life jacket at the time of the drowning.”
The increase in drownings was likely due to the closings of community pools and some beaches due to the COVID-19 pandemic, according to the Corps.
A “recovery operation†continued until dusk Saturday, July 18 for a missing 22-year-old man who disappeared in the water while swimming on Pewaukee Lake with two others. The search will continue Sunday morning.
According to Village of Pewaukee Police Chief Timothy Heier, around 4 p.m., the lake patrol was dispatched to a report of a missing person after the three individuals had been swimming off a boat — and the 22-year-old man became distressed. He never resurfaced.
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