Oct 20, 2008 7:43 pm US/Eastern
3 Drown After Fishing Boat Capsizes In Catskills
Divers, Sheriff: Lifejackets Would Have Prevented Tragedy
BETHEL, N.Y. (CBS) ―
It was supposed to be a fishing trip among friends, but when it was all over three of the young men drowned. On Monday, search and rescue teams recovered the final missing body. Friends and family are struggling to deal with the tragedy.
As the row boat was taken away for evidence, one conclusion seemed inescapable. This was a tragedy that didn't have to happen.
"If they'd been wearing life vests, everybody would have made it to shore," Sullivan County Sheriff Mike Schiff said.
But as heartbroken family quickly learned only one of the four would make it out of Mountain Lake alive.
Investigators said the group from Brooklyn was on a weekend fishing getaway when someone stood up and the boat flipped, dumping all four into frigid water about 8-feet deep.
"The water temperature was 48, 49 degrees, and when you hit that cold water your muscles seize up," Schiff said. "They were wearing winter clothing, which quickly fills with water and drags you down, so it was against them."
A simple experiment with a sweatshirt and a scale vividly demonstrates how those young men must have struggled in those heavy wet clothes. Dry, the shirt weighed less than a pound, but wet it weighed almost 4 pounds.
The survivor who reached shore, Gianfranco Generoso, desperately screamed at his friends to shed their layers of winter clothes.
One diver recovered victim Carlo Milito about 100 feet from shore.
"He had stripped off his sweatshirt, no shoes on, he was getting closer, but couldn't make it," said Kris Scullion of the Suffolk County Diving Team.
The 18-year-old diver who found victim Domenico Coluccio said he understands the mindset that led to this awful event.
"You just think you're invincible," Phillip Dutcher said. "Something as stupid as a life jacket, don't want to wear it, because you're fishing with your buddies, and you don't want them ragging on you."
But they're called life jackets for a reason.
The three victims are all cousins from Dyker Heights, Brooklyn.
(© MMIX, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.)
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