Reckless conduct charge in "boating" incident

Life is never dull in Keene, NH. On April 6th an experienced kayaker, Mark Boucher, was pulled beneath the waterfall on the Ashuelot River in Keene.

(this is a stock photo of the falls in question)

According to the news story:

Kayak Accident Described

Mr. Boucher was an experienced kayaker and a strong swimmer. Nevertheless, as his party was leaving the water to portage around the falls, his kayak got a little too close to the falls and the current pulled him under until he lost consciousness. He spent two weeks in critical condition at Darmouth-Hitchcock Hospital in Hanover, NH and is still undergoing rehab.

This is where the story gets a little more ridiculous. Less than two weeks after Mr. Boucher's accident, two Keene State College students (both members of the track team for what it's worth) decided it would be a good idea to go over the same falls in a kiddie wading pool.

Student hospitalized after taking on waterfall

Needless to say, it did not end well. One of the students, Alex Perry, 19, ended up trapped under the falls for 10 minutes. Keene firemen had to rescue him and another woman who had jumped in to try and save him. Perry was hospitalized.

Now the students have been charged with reckless conduct and could face up to a $2,000 fine and a year in jail.

Kiddie Pool Rafters to Face Charges

Needless to say, the College paper's editorial staff is outraged at how officials are picking on poor innocent students.

Injustice!!!!!!

That sounds like a poster child case for that "reckless..." law, sounds pretty stupid.

Reminds me....

Back in my PSU days (not so distant) I watched a kid get accidentally sucked through Livermore Falls in Campton with only a small inner tube. We watched him try to fight the current above, get sucked in, go under, surface and bob around a ways before being spit out the bottom with only scratches and bruises, it was an intense scene. People were going crazy grabbing for their cell phones to call 911. Thankfully, although running pretty high, the river wasn't nearly as high as in these pictures.

Sadly, that same day another PSU student got sucked into the raging current and drowned after I had left the beach, he was to graduate in a few days. Weird thing was that I talked with him briefly when we put in at Blair Bridge to float to Plymouth, next thing I know I see his face on the news...

Imagine being the kid that made it through seeing that on the news the same day your own life got spared.

Too close to home for comfort

Well, the truth is that many of us (myself included) have had "on the job training" that we're lucky to have survived. Remember this thread?

Stupid People

- Monadnock Volunteer (aka Steve)

What the school paper is missing is that the "threat of being fined up to $2,000 and facing up to a year in prison" is almost certainly not going to actually turn into jail time. Even if they're found guilty of misdemeanor reckless conduct it doesn't mean they're going to serve time. They may get fined, they may get community service, they may even plea bargain something. But they'll get scared, and not do something like this again, and maybe get others to not do so as well.

There's a big difference between a kayak and a kiddie pool.

Many people are unaware of how deadly low head dams are. They are a drowning machine. Everything they do is designed (not intentionally) to kill you and suck you and a boat into them and not release you. If nothing else these cases let other people know how deadly these types of damns are. These types of damns are not something that most people would look at and say to themselves "that looks dangerous as hell". That is one of the things that makes them so deadly. These charges at least lets it be known that these types of dams are deadly and if you need more proof, look at the state of the victims. Hopefully the court will have the sense to be lenient with whatever sentence is handed down.

The sentance should probably consist of community service going to schools telling others about the dangers of these dams.

Keith

Brings back memories of a classmates father being killed kayaking below the Bellows Falls dam (just north of Keene) in the spring. Took them quite a while to find his body. I'm surprised the kid has any brain cells left to prosecute after being under water that long. I would have loved to hear the ER's take on that one (I used to work at the hospital in Keene-this might have made it into our own stupid people legends, right along with the woman who brought the racoon home and kept it with the kids for a week before it died of rabies).

Death by drowning depends on many factors. Off the top of my head:

Temperature of the water
Cleanliness of the water
Age of the victim
Amount of time immersed

This may not be all inclusive. Like I said it is off the top of my head. And not all people that drown actually have water in their lungs. Something called dry drowning which happens is a fairly large number of water deaths especially cold water deaths. This is caused by a laryngospasm. Basically the airway snaps shut and the person cannot exchange oxygen and very little water is found in the lungs. Again if I remember correctly, I believe that this is leftover in humans of the mammalian dive reflex similar to what is found in dolphins and whales.

Keith

Did Boucher get arrested, fined and or threatened with jail time?