Life-saving equipment inadequate, says mother of teen in fatal accident
A grieving mother whose disabled son died last week after he was dropped while being hoisted from a sailboat says there didn’t appear to be enough life-saving equipment available at the dock.
“I think they just seemed really stunned and shocked that this happened,” Carrie Pollard said of the three staff members who tried to help her 16-year-old son Gabriel after the fall.
“They didn’t bring out any safety equipment, let’s just put it that way,” Pollard said Thursday.
The dock is off federal land at Munroe Head at Maplebank Road, adjacent to the Songhees Nation.
“There should have been some flotation device to put a person on whilst in the water and some other way of getting somebody out of the water — you always have to keep someone like this stable — you can’t just be dragging somebody up out of the water.”
At public pools, there is often a spinal board within reach “They didn’t have anything like that, that I saw — I don’t know. I honestly don’t believe that they thought Gabriel was that hurt actually.”
The accident happened on June 21 about 4 p.m. on a dock used by the Canadian Forces Sailing Association, a CFB Esquimalt recreational club. A separate group, the Disabled Sailing Association, also uses the dock.
Gabriel, who had muscular dystrophy and used a wheelchair, was sailing with the Disabled Sailing Association that day. He was in a hand-winch sling being carried off a Martin 16 sailboat when something failed and he fell, landing on his back on the sailboat, his head snapping back, said his mother, who was a witness. Gabriel then slid into the water.
He was taken to Victoria General Hospital, where he was pronounced dead.
What happened between the accident and the ambulance ride seemed to be more of a Hail Mary attempt to pluck the teenager out of the water than a co-ordinated rescue plan, Pollard said.
She said she had to run back to her vehicle to get her cellphone to call 911.
“There was no boss of first aid — one person who is with him and stays with him,” Pollard said. “There was no ‘somebody go call an ambulance.’
“Nobody had a phone. I had to go to my car to get a phone … They had radios but nobody called police. I’m pretty sure nobody else called.”
One of the three Disabled Sailing Association instructors on duty brought a zodiac around — “and wanted to drag him out into the zodiac but she was by herself and it’s not that big a space he was in, so how would one do that?” she asked.
Pollard, who has first-aid training, said she tried to enter the water “and somebody grabbed me.”
In the end, the instructors and other parents and caregivers — using the sling Gabriel was in when the hoist detached — helped to pull Gabriel from the water onto the dock.
When Gabriel was loaded in the ambulance, he was able to talk and move his limbs but had a seizure on the way and couldn’t be revived at the hospital.
The three staff members on hand when Gabriel fell included one who had worked with the association since about 2016 and two who had just started as summer students, Doug Nutting, the sailing association’s director of operations, had said Wednesday. Ranging in age from 20 to 23, the three staff are Sail Canada certified instructors trained in lifesaving and rescue skills including retrieving people from the water, he said.
By all accounts, staff did what they could, he said.
It was an “unpredictable freak accident” that the bar, which holds the sling sailors ride in, detached from the lifting device, Nutting said. He said he doesn’t know why that happened and noted that the same equipment is used by associations across North America.
The equipment is visually inspected every day and until June 21, the Disabled Sailing Association, established in 1992, hadn’t had a serious incident, he said.
Gabriel had been sailing with the Disabled Sailing Association for about three years and at times sailed solo.
The family is planning a private service for him this week and a public celebration of life on Aug. 11 at Pearkes arena in Saanich.
The Canadian Forces National Investigation Service, the investigative arm of the Canadian Forces Military Police, is investigating.
“We can confirm the Canadian Forces National Investigation Service is collaborating with the local coroner,” said Capt. Jenn Jackson, public affairs officer for CFB Esquimalt.