Posted on 06/30/2011 8:40:00 AM PDT by Nashvegas
FALL RIVER (CBS) — There’s another strange twist after a woman’s body was found floating in a public pool in Fall River, possibly going unnoticed for days.
The mayor of Fall River says “that health inspectors from the City visited the pool on Monday and on Tuesday and inspected the facilities,” which was during the time that body was believed to be in the water.
Marie Joseph was at the pool on Sunday and hadn’t been seen since. It wasn’t until Tuesday night, when some kids broke into the Veteran’s Memorial swimming pool and found Joseph’s body floating in the pool.
The mayor said in a statement on Thursday that those city inspectors have been placed on administrative leave.
Investigators have said that, on Sunday, 36-year-old Joseph went down a slide with a 9-year-old boy and vanished.
“We’re not certain about anything other than the fact that we have a death and that this person was at the pool, and what took place with respect to the slide. Everything beyond that is absolutely under investigation,” said Samuel Sutter, the Bristol District Attorney.
The pool was open to the public Monday and Tuesday with lifeguards, none of whom noticed the body under 12 feet of water.
“The pool’s always packed, somebody should have come by and ended up seeing something,” said one neighbor.
In the meantime, police and state officials have closed down all 30 of its deep water swimming pools as officials try to figure out what happened.
The Department of Conservation announced every one of its deep water pools would remain closed while officials conduct a “full review of each facility’s safety and operation procedures over the next 24 to 48 hours.”
Officials have also placed the entire staff at the Fall River pool on administrative leave.
“Wow! Can she ever hold her breath!”
Weekend at Bernies IV
Unless the bottom of the pool was dark it should be easy to see a human shaped mass even under 12 feet of water.
The 9 year old did notify the lifeguard that the woman who bumped into him as he was going down the slide, had disappeared.
The 9 year old was not 'with' Mrs. Joseph. She 'crashed' into him on the way down the slide (indicating that one of them hadn't 'waited' their 'turn'), and that may have knocked her unconscious.
(btw, I got all this info from the article at the link)
(The answers to your questions are all in the article and video)
The pool was not CLEAR. The INSPECTOR even reported it was CLOUDY. You couldn't see the drain at the deep end.
They have several life guards, including one at the end of the SLIDE who is supposed to ensure that those who go DOWN, actually come back UP. The 9 year old boy even told the lifeguard the woman who crashed into him on the way down the slide, hadn't come back up. The guard said he would search for her. (but apparently didn't)
The 9 year old had no relationship to Mrs. Joseph. She just crashed into him on the way down the slide.
There were hundreds of other people, including several life guards, at the pool. There were several friends of Mrs. Joseph at the pool as well, and they waited for her until the pool closed. I hardly consider that to be 'alone'.
“The pool was not CLEAR. The INSPECTOR even reported it was CLOUDY. You couldn’t see the drain at the deep end.”
Ick. They’re supposed to do something about that. Cloudy water, coupled with the refraction in 12 feet could make it difficult to see something even human-sized at the bottom. I’d still fire everyone - lifeguards, inspectors - who should have been doing their job better.
“I hardly consider that to be ‘alone’. “
No, I wouldn’t consider that to be alone either. And I did read the article posted and I even went through to one of the hyper-linked prior articles, but I didn’t see all that info.
Why didn’t her friends sound the alarm?
This gets into my Rule #2 - never leave your friend.
(these are the rules I always tried to drum into my kid’s head btw. And yeah, I broke most of them in my day, but I didn’t make a habit of breaking them, let’s put it that way.)
One commentor at one of the sites I read said they didn’t think the woman had really been in the pool 2-3 days, that she’d been done away with elsewhere and brought back and dumped there.
But I suppose an autopsy might shed some light on that theory.
How creepy would it be to find you’d been swimming in a pool with a dead body in it?
I wonder if this one will get “ripped from the headlines” for a TV show.
I hope they don’t decide to prevent this happening again by mandating all pools should now be 4 feet deep.
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