A 14-year-old floating on an inner tube on Lake Ontario on July 2, 2020, was being carried away from shore, and, panicking, she left the inner tube and entered the water with her brother, who was able to swim to safety. The girl was struggling in waves several hundred feet from shore. Draven M. Starr-Howell, a 20-year-old retail clerk of Palmyra, New York, was fishing on the pier, left his personal items on the pier, and then jumped into the water. Meanwhile others, including the girl’s mother and a sheriff’s deputy, entered the water or assisted from the pier and pushed and pulled the girl, who was by then unresponsive, to safety, as well as the mother and the deputy. The girl was hospitalized overnight and recovered. A sheriff’s boat crew, helped by two bystanders, pulled Starr-Howell, who was unresponsive, from the water. He died the next day due to complications of drowning.
91205-10240