I’m wondering if this is similar to OSEL’s mouthpiece trying to manufacture and manipulate evidence and sway public opinion prior to the Skiles trial.
The Third Dive: The Death of Rob Stewart
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And in this case, the ME was a pretty good diving expert, but not so good of a rebreather guy. He issued his report without the NEDU findings, which completely negated his report.
But NEDU did examine the rebreather. Chain of custody was broken, but the RB manufacturer have ways of getting the data out of the RB despite how it is handled. The PI is a rebreather instructor for almost every unit on the market. He was FBI. I think (without speaking for Osbourne) that that's part of what the show is going to show. That while we have no idea what caused Rob (and Sotis) to pass out, we are pretty sure what happened after that. Never 100% though.
I agree that no one who died pursuing their love of diving would want this kind of discussion about them. Human nature is what it is, however.
TrimixToo
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I suspect you are talking about MikeP. I have seen him speak. His credentials and experience are impressive, and he seems like a solid guy to me. I'd be very inclined to believe what he says. Some people just radiate integrity.
I likewise agree that many people who die diving would not want to have the events dissected if they exposed lapses on their parts. For what little it's worth, I am (posthumously) willing to be an object lesson if I screw up and die if the reasons can be determined. We have rules for reasons, after all. We should know whether a new one needs to be invented or whether a fatal accident was covered by an existing rule.
Your response is one of the more articulate and reasonable ones that I've dealt with. I never wanted to suggest Carlo's accident was a homicide. I was always aware it was an accident of some kind. And I agree Cave diving is unforgiving. It very well might have been oxygen toxicity that killed Carlos. But there have been all kinds of cases where high PPO2 levels for long periods of time did not kill a diver. And there are other instances of course where its killed within minutes. It's not because he was my friend, in fact he was really an acquaintance, but I think more fastidious work should have been done by the ME and the local police. Then we would know for sure. But for now, let's agree to disagree.
I'm sorry about your friend Scott. In the Queen of Nassau incident we're actually pretty lucky. The M.E. was a long standing certified diver and he had an assistant who was a certified rebreather instructor. He also brought in the U.S. Navy's experimental dive unit to do the forensic work on the equipment. I spoke extensively with the M.E. and he had a pretty good foundation in what factors could kill a diver. If you get a chance to watch the show, he breaks it down in a pretty detailed manner and there's a web link in which he more fully explains his reasons.
The Third Dive: Diving Deaths
I recommend you take the time to do a serious search and review of the reliability of eyewitness testimony, particularly when there is a conflagration or casualty taking place in front of the eyewitness.
I witnessed an aircraft accident on the deck of an aircraft carrier. I was in an airplane waiting to be connected to the port catapult when the aircraft on the starboard catapult appeared to me to disintegrate in the middle of the catapult shot. I was convinced that I saw the aircraft explode in the middle of the shot; I was interviewed immediately after the accident before I talked to anyone else or had a chance to compare my observation to any objective evidence. Turns out a complicated problem with the bridle arrestor actually pulled the bridle off the lightweight trainer aircraft (T2C) in the middle of the shot. All of the "stuff" that convinced me the aircraft blew up was the normal flame and smoke and debris of a normal ejection sequence (two ejection seat rockets, pyrotechnics, broken canopy glass).
At the time I gave my completely wrong eyewitness testimony I was a combat-experienced fleet carrier pilot, Basic and Advanced jet flight instructor, a graduate of the U.S. Naval Postgraduate School Aviation Safety Curriculum, had personally participated in more than ten Navy aviation accident investigations, and was currently employed full time as an aviation safety professional as the training wing safety officer. I couldn't have been more wrong, despite all the credentials, training, and experience that should have informed my opinion.
That's a great anecdote and I see you point very clearly. Thank you for taking the time to give me that context. It helped. What my friend in the OPP was referring to was that people get influenced by others the further they get away from the incident. So they may talk to friend and family and lawyers and through that interaction they start to change what they believe they saw. His point wasn't that eye witnesses are reliable but that they get less reliable as time goes on. In the Rob Stewart case I saw examples of that. I saw and read the statements that everyone on board gave the night of the accident. A year or more later I read their sworn depositions--some significant differences. So which do I take as more reliable? The statement given within hours or the statement given after many meetings with lawyers?
I agree completely with the concept of keeping witnesses separated if you can and interviewing them as quickly as reasonable after the accident. But it isn't just talking to other witnesses that changes what witnesses may come to believe. In my own case, immediately after taking my testimony I was shown the PLAT (flight deck video system) recording. The video made it crystal clear that the aircraft didn't blow up on the catapult...it went off the pointy end of the ship as a convertible and without ejection seats, but otherwise intact. So anyone who talked to me 30 minutes after the accident got a completely different "opinion". But the anecdote has more value: I was told by a certified credible expert, within a day or so of the anecdotal accident, that there was no way a bridle arrestor could be strong enough to pull a bridle off an aircraft in the middle of a catapult shot. In the end, the accident investigation concluded that was exactly what happened. The formal accident investigation report was issued more than a year after the accident. So if you had seen statements from me through the course of that year, you would have seen at least three different opinions of what happened. The fact that relevant parties change their statements over time isn't necessarily an axis of their 'reliability'.
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Thank you. I still hope to share some of the material that didn't make it into the documentary that I thought other divers might like to see. I just have to figure out how up upload .mov files.
