News: Cesspool Accident Kills LI Teens
(Long Island, N.Y.) A sixteen-year-old from Holtsville and a nineteen-year-old from Farmingville died in the early hours of yesterday morning after a cesspool accident on Wednesday. The accident occurred in their sixteen-year-old friend’s backyard on Blue Point Road in Farmingville. After the younger boy had fallen in, the nineteen-year-old jumped in attempt to rescue his friend from drowning.
The accident occurred at roughly eight in the evening on Wednesday when the trio had allegedly been gathering items to start a campfire and roast marshmallows. They came across a three-foot-wide concrete pebble-studded cover to a cesspool and mistook it for a rock. Reports stated that the sixteen-year-old who lived at the residence claimed he didn’t know what it was.
The teens removed the cover, believing it would make good use as a base for their campfire, the sixteen-year-old visitor lost his footing. He allegedly grabbed the sides of the cesspool and was standing before passing out from the toxic fumes. He appeared to be drowning and didn’t know how to swim.
The cesspool was sixteen-feet-deep and filled about halfway with waste and toxic chemicals. The two-hundred-pound cover was allegedly not difficult to slip off, and reports estimated that the teens had about a minute before being severely impaired by concentrated levels of methane gas. One source stated that they would have had less time if the fumes had caused them to vomit.
In a moment of panic, the nineteen-year-old entered the pool to rescue his friend who had lost consciousness. The sixteen-year-old claimed he was going to jump, and that the nineteen-year-old had beat him to it. He handed him a hose before watching both teens lose consciousness.
The sixteen-year-old ran to his home and yelled to his father that the boys had fallen in. His family had rented the home for the past two years, and reports stated that his father had to hold him back while he attempted to jump and save his friends. The family then dialed emergency services.
A thirty-six-year-old neighbor, who worked in heating and air conditioning and is familiar with cesspools, claimed to have heard the first responding police officer scream that he needed something to help pull out the boys. The neighbor brought a thirty-foot rope and stated that the boys were barely visible. They were eventually taken out with the help of the Farmingville Fire Department and rushed to Stony Brook University Medical Center in cardiac arrest.
One of the boys was retrieved with the Farmingville Fire Department’s pike poles, which are long with a metal hook on one of the ends. The other was pulled out by a twelve-foot pole that authorities hooked underneath his clothing. Reports stated that autopsies will be conducted to determine the cause of death and that Suffolk County Homicide Detectives are still investigating.
Such freak incidents, though tragic, are not unheard of in Long Island towns. Last year, a seventeen-year-old was killed after falling into a cesspool at a Smithtown Dunkin’ Donuts. In 2007 a landscaper was killed after he drove a lawnmower into a cesspool in Deer Park.
