Behind the Badge - Combinations that are Never a Good Idea
Combinations that are Never a Good Idea
District Game Warden Mike Sedlacek
Now is a good time to remind boaters about the importance of wearing a personal flotation device and leaving alcoholic beverages on shore.
This reminder brings up a memory of when I and another warden were out on patrol over a Fourth of July weekend in southeast North Dakota during a firework show on a popular reservoir.
We observed a boat operating without the red and green bow lights as required by North Dakota law and initiated a stop on the boat.
Upon further investigation, the boat was short six PFDs and was overloaded by two occupants.
We followed the boat back to the dock and stayed out away from the dock while we completed the citations.
When the citations were ready to be issued to the boat operator, we pulled up behind the boat at the dock and a passenger started walking back to our boat.
We thought he was possibly coming to hold our boat for us but kept on walking to the end of the dock.
When he got to the end of the dock, he jumped in and kept walking further into the water.
We both had observed this passenger on the boat at the time of the stop as being extremely intoxicated.
We started to tell the person in the water to come back to the dock, but he didn’t listen and did not give any response to us and kept walking deeper into the lake.
A different passenger on the boat yelled to us that the person in the water could not swim, which was now evident to us as they were starting to bob up and down in the water.
All the passengers on the boat then started to yell at us to save the person.
The other warden started to maneuver the boat toward the individual in the water while I tried to grab him.
The individual again continued to move deeper into the lake, ignoring us.
I gave him several commands to swim toward me and our boat and to reach for my hand.
Again, he ignored everything that I said.
We kept trying to get the boat closer to the individual so I could grab him and after a couple minutes of no success, it was at this time that the individual realized they were in serious trouble after he had gone under the water a couple of times.
Finally, at this point when he had swallowed a couple mouthfuls of water and their head was going under the water, he started to reach for my hand.
I managed to grab the individual by the fingers and pull him to the boat.
We both lifted him into the boat and sat him down.
Once we had him sat down, he then tried to get up and jump back into the water.
I had to hold him down until we got back to the dock.
He tried talking to me but nothing he said was understandable because of how intoxicated he was.
We got him back to the dock and turned over to friends and family and told them to take him away from the water.
They did take him off the dock and took him home.
This incident ended with everyone going home safe, but is a good reminder that in over 80% of drownings during water activities the person is not wearing a personal flotation device and up to 70% of deaths associated with water recreation for adolescents and adults, they have been using alcohol.
Be safe, wear your PFD and leave the alcohol on shore.