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Man dies at Lake Travis
[SIZE=-1]11:27 AM CDT on Sunday, October 14, 2007
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[SIZE=-1]By JESSICA VESS
KVUE News[/SIZE]
Travis country sheriff's officials say a scuba diver is dead after a dive in the lake. Authorities say the man's body was pulled from the water Saturday afternoon at Windy Point Park.
"His air tank still had one-thousand pounds of air in it, so obviously he didn't run out of air, said Paul Brown, volunteer rescue diver.
Brown was just finishing his dive at Windy Point Park in Lake Travis Saturday afternoon when he heard calls for help. Brown says he turned to find a scuba master swimming to the shore with another diver in tow.
"One of the instructors from Corpus surfaced and yelled out that he needed an ambulance and he had the diver in tow. So we pulled him on up, helped him get him out of the water and removed his equipment. Wasn't looking too good, froth out of the mouth and all," said Brown.
Travis county sheriff's officials say the man was diving with a three buddy team when his partners say he began acting erratically and then disappeared in the water. His diving partners say they immediately began searching...but the crew was down about 85 feet where it's dark and hard to see more than ten feet in front of you.
"Lake Travis is not a clear water lake, it is some-what murky and visibility is limited," said Roger Wade of the Travis County Sheriffs Office.
"From what I've heard he'd been in the water for 30-40 minutes until they found him, that's not usually a good sign," said Brown.
Sherriffs officials say the man in his mid-50s died at Brackenridge hospital less than an hour after nearby divers found him and pulled him from the water.
Even though the man was pulled from the waters here at Windy Point sheriffs officials are not saying his cause of death was a drowning, they say while he was diving he may have suffered cardiac arrest.
"The EMS is calling it a medical incident, we'll have to wait for the medical examiner to complete its investigation before we say anything further," said Wade.
Sheriff's officials say they are still investigating the accident and have not yet released the victims name. They have not said whether or not the man was out diving for leisure or if he was in training. This is the third reported death at Lake Travis for 2007.
