News

Bystanders` Quick Response Might Have Saved Boy from Drowning in Wash.

Steven Gardner

07/15/2014

July 15--SILVERDALE -- Teenagers and adults who tended to a 12-year-old boy found floating Monday under an Island Lake dock might have saved his life.

Crews from Central Kitsap Fire and Rescue responded to a 911 call around 3:30 p.m. for a boy who was a potential drowning victim. Witnesses said the 12-year old South Kitsap boy was found floating under a pier near a paved trail in Island Lake Park.

He was breathing with a respirator at Harrison Medical Center in Bremerton. Later he was taken to Mary Bridge Children's Hospital in Tacoma, where he was in critical condition Monday night.

Dylan Leer, a 14-year-old Klahowya Secondary School sophomore, said kids on the dock saw what they thought was a mannequin under the dock but soon realized it was a person. Leer said his friend Noah Elkington pulled out the 12-year-old South Kitsap boy.

Leer, who was certified in CPR through a class at Klahowya, began doing chest compressions. A woman who was a certified nurse soon arrived and continued efforts to resuscitate the boy until CKFR crews arrived.

"It appears that the immediate deployment of CPR assisted greatly and is probably why this young boy is with us right now," said Scott Wilson, Kitsap County Sheriff's Office spokesman.

Leer, who was with a group of about nine other kids, said the boy was fishing with a relative. Leer said he did not know when the boy went into the water or how.

The most recent drowning incident at Island Lake was in 2011, when a 20-year-old Central Kitsap man drowned during a night swim at the park.

Island Lake has swimming beach with a sign that holds life jackets visitors are advised to use. The pier where the 12-year-old was found is several yards away from the beach near a trail that leads to the community center.

Later Monday, dozens of people were swimming at the lake both at the beach, near the pier and other spots along the trail, with no sign of what had happened earlier.