Jeremy

Friend told lifeguard that Jeremy was under water
By Monique Beaudin, The Gazette – July 15, 2011

It was the last day of school and staff at L’Aquarelle elementary school in Laval were taking Grade 4, 5 and 6 students to a water park in the Laurentians on June 23, 2010 to celebrate. The adults supervising the trip to Mont St. Sauveur met the day before to go over the plan for the day and find out which children they would be responsible for. There were 44 Grade 4 kids on the trip, including Jeremy Mulumba, divided into groups of eight or nine per adult. Parents had received a form from the school saying they needed to provide a life jacket if their child was a beginner swimmer. Jeremy had taken swimming lessons as a toddler and preschooler, and because he had been swimming at day camps, his parents didn't think he needed a life jacket coroner Catherine Rudel-Tessier said. The children were told to stay with the adult in charge of their group or check in each time they went down a water slide. At the water park, staff met them on their bus and repeated the rules, adding they were not to go past the black line painted at the bottom of the wave pool separating the deep and shallow ends. At the 1:45 p.m., the children were told to get out of the pool to get ready to go back to school. At that time, the adults did a head count and realized Jeremy was missing. One boy told police he and Jeremy had gone back into the wave pool to reach each other to the black line separating the deep and shallow ends. On their fourth race, according to the boy, a "bizarre" wave swept Jeremy into the deep end. The boy said he tried to hold Jeremy's shoulder, but another wave pulled him away. The boy said he immediately told a lifeguard his friend, who couldn't swim very well, was under the water, drowning. According to the boy, the lifeguard said he couldn’t do anything, so the boy told the teachers. A teacher told a second lifeguard a child was missing. A lifeguard who was shown where Jeremy could have been in the water told a teacher what they saw was a square of black paint on the bottom of the pool. At that point, the teachers began looking all over the park for Jeremy. At 2:20 p.m., the wave mechanism turned off automatically and the three lifeguards changed places, informing each other that a teacher was concerned about a dark spot on the bottom of the pool. The waves came back on at 2:25 p.m., while the school staff searched the grounds for Jeremy. At 3 p.m. a lifeguard noticed something at the bottom of the pool and told another lifeguard. The second lifeguard dove into the water and saw a child at the bottom of the pool. He went to the infirmary to report what he had seen. The lifeguard was told to dive back down and retrieve the child, which he did, bringing Jeremy to the beach beside the wave pool. Lifesaving procedures began, and Jeremy was taken by ambulance to a hospital in St. Jerome. He was declared dead at 4:02 p.m.