Authorities ID boy who drowned
Teenager asked friend to shoot a video as he jumped into lake
Authorities have identified the 14-year-old boy who drowned in Lake Michigan off Atwater Park beach as Sareyi Ahmed of Milwaukee.
Shortly before 6 p.m. Tuesday, Sareyi handed his new cellphone to a friend and told him to make a video, and then he jumped off a break wall about 300 feet north of the public beach area at the park in the 4000 block of N. Lake Drive, a report from the Milwaukee County medical examiner’s office said.
Sareyi, who had just completed eighth grade at Clara Mohammed School in Milwaukee, was with a group of friends who told authorities that they had assumed Sareyi knew how to swim.
When Sareyi failed to resurface, 911 was called.
Milwaukee Fire Department divers located the boy about 40 minutes later and efforts to resuscitate him were not successful, said North Shore Fire/Rescue Lt. Dan Tyke.
Clara Mohammed Principal Halim Mahdi has started a GoFundMe account to raise $5,000 to help Sareyi’s family cover funeral expenses.He added that several Shorewood businesses had already reached out to provide support for his parents and four siblings.
Mahdi described Sareyi as responsible and selfless, a teenager who loved social media and who was ready to grow up.
“He was a critical thinker,” Mahdi said. “You couldn’t just tell him something. He took it with a grain of salt; he wanted to know for himself.”
Mahdi Muhammad, a family friend acting as their spokesman, said Sareyi’s parents are doing “as well as they can.”
“He was just a good child on summer vacation,” Muhammad said. “Now, a mother is grieving.”
For the first time in five years, lifeguards are not on duty at Atwater Park beach due to a shortage of lifeguard applications received by the Milwaukee County Parks Department. Signs at the park advise visitors to swim at their own risk.
But it is unclear if a lifeguard would have made a difference in Sareyi’s drowning. In the past, summer shifts for Atwater Park lifeguards were from 11 a.m.-4 p.m. And a lifeguard for the public beach would not have been able to see the break wall on private property from which Sareyi jumped, Tyke said.