A near-drowning occurred at Lake Wilderness on Monday, July 8, 2024 shortly after 2 pm. Witnesses to the event reported hearing a loud, grieving scream from a woman. Witness Katie Nelson, RN, a Harborview nurse, ran to the woman, who was in knee-deep water running toward the beach holding the limp boy, a toddler, under her arm. When Nelson got to the mother and son, he was awake, breathing, lethargic, and blue and did not need rescue breathing. Witness Annalisa Grice, a lifeguard herself, reported that the child did not appear to have worn a life vest. Lifeguards rushed to the area. Puget Sound Regional Fire Authority medics arrived 6 minutes after they were called. After a short time, he was taken inside and later placed alive in an ambulance and driven away.
Grice and Nelson praised the lifeguards on site, who they saw do an excellent job of responding correctly and controlling the crowd, getting it to move back so as to give first responders space to work, and also praised first responders for their quick arrival. They both expressed concern that the young lifeguards and the people present at this event were traumatized, as they were. Grice saw all lifeguards leave their posts immediately after the ambulance and fire department left, making the lake swimming area unguarded for about half an hour, something she attributed to the trauma they had all just experienced.
Life jackets save lives. The US Coast Guard and King County recommend that everyone swimming in a lake or in open water wear a life jacket while swimming. Free loaner life jackets are available for public use at Lake Wilderness Park and at many King County outdoor beaches and pools.
Anyone with information about the child’s outcome is requested to contact the Voice at news@voiceofthevalley.com so that this may be shared with our concerned community in a later article.
