This demonstrates the problem with being Open Water or Advanced Open Water certified in quarry.
From day 1 I stated that Gabe was not guilty of murder, he was guilty of being "over Certified" and believing it. What happened here is two would be detectives that didn't witness a thing decided he was guilty and called Tina's father setting the whole revenge ball rolling.
I agree with the general drift of what you are saying. From what I've seen, most people who do the OW courses go on to become competent and safe divers. Some don't. I'd suggest that Tina and Gabe's story highlights the risk factors associated with certification. Those factors include doing it in a different country with different qualifying conditions, many months between dives, the diver being very anxious and uncomfortable in the water and not having mastered basic skills like finning and buoyancy control.
I've noted increasingly in a number of different areas of life that people are being expected to do courses and become 'certified' after reading a manual and doing a few practical exercises. I've seen it in my work as an engineer. I saw it in the first aid course I did recently. It is the way diving courses are done. As Gabe discovered, this often does little except increase your personal liability.
Last year I did a first aid course. A few months later I'd forgotten how many pumps of the heart and breaths were required for a given interval. In short I've forgotten more than I remember. I spoke with a friend recently about a deep diving course he'd done and asked him what he'd learned. He was quick to respond he couldn't remember much. I have no problem accepting that Gabe felt inadequate even though he'd done a 'rescue' course many years before.
I'd recommend any one who does their open water to use what they've learned on a number of dives soon after the course. Practice setting up your tank and gear at home if you found it confusing. Where I live, people who learn to drive a car have big signs that tell other drivers they are inexperienced. How about a big orange sticker on the tank of inexperienced divers or those whose experience is in doubt. Experienced divers could be encouraged to keep a watchful eye out and help those who appear to be having trouble.
On a dive yesterday I saw someone about 5-6 m away with their spare air regulator streaming behind. In an emergency that could have been enough to kill someone. I swam over and alerted the diver. On reflection, it did occur to me that this was about the distance that others like Stutz' were supposed to have been from Tina and Gabe at the time Tina drowned. I still find it difficult to fathom that no one went to help as Tina drifted to the bottom.
he got his mask knocked off and his regulator knocked out of his mouth and panicked. She was over weighted, in a strong current started to sink, panicked and over breathed her regulator.
Firstly, Gabe never said he got his mask knocked off. He said it was dislodged and, as I recall, got flooded. Secondly, I believe these comments made by Gabe and the inferences you have drawn are reasonable and probably did happen, but they are not established fact.
Some facts of the case are:
- Gabe and Tina aborted their first dive and went back to the Spoilsport;
- Ken and Paula Snyder and Doug and Ginger Milsap were other divers on the Spoilsport;
- Stutx claims he saw Tina sink away from Gabe after their encounter;
- Ken Snyder did not believe that Gabe's version fo the story was genuine;
- Gabe and Tina dove the SS Yongala; and
- Tina drowned with regulator in her mouth.
If three people had seen Gabe grab Tina, shut off her valve and hold here for several minutes while she drowned and gave similar eye witness accounts to the police of what happened then Gabe should have been convicted of murder. What happened would have been established beyond reasonable doubt.
In trying to work out what happened, the police are supposed to find and assemble all the facts or evidence supporting their case. It is like assembling a giant jigsaw puzzle. The pieces of the puzzle are the evidence or facts. When enough pieces have been assembled, a reasonable person can see and interpret the whole picture. If you are missing three pieces of a 1000 piece jigsaw puzzle then it probably won't matter. If you are missing enough of the important pieces the whole picture becomes obscured.
Problems occur when there are big gaps in the picture or the wrong pieces are forced into the wrong places. That is what happened in the prosecution's case. They gave an account of what they believed could have happened but they didn't have the facts to back up their story. For every story concocted that tried to explain how Gabe murdered Tina, there was an equally plausible story explaining how it was just an accident.
Tina was said to have drowned in the postmortem. I believe that was a fact in this case. The doctor who carried out the postmortem testified that the medical evidence he saw was consistent with Tina drowning. Some tried to argue Tina died as a result of being asphyxiated ie. she ran out of air and this was consistent with Gabe turning off Tina's air supply. At one stage this was popular in the media and even accepted by one of the appeal judges.
The fact that Tina drowned does not however rule out the possibility that Gabe turned off Tina's air supply. While it seems unlikely, Tina could have drowned with the regulator in her mouth after having had her air supply turned off.
We discussed before on this thread that even while Tina was breathing it is possible that she panicked and the seal between her lips and the regulator could have broken allowing water to enter her mouth and lungs. This is not a fact. It is conjecture. The fact that we don't know for sure how Tina died with plenty of air in her tank and the regulator in her mouth highlights how much we don't really know about this case.
Facts are important. How you interpret the facts are also important. In a murder trial you cannot afford to have too many pieces of the jigsaw puzzle missing that get filled in with hearsay and conjecture. In the end that is why the case was tossed out of court. It was easy for the media to beat up a story and gain public sympathy for Tina. They took a few pieces from the puzzle and filled in the blanks with hearsay and innuendo. It could have meant a man was wrongly convicted for murder and even sentenced to death.
Incidentally, I don't think we should accept everything Gabe says as fact. Some of the things he is reported to say in the media seem odd and I wouldn't rule out the possibility that he has lied. That doesn't make him a murderer.
That said, on more than one occasion his story can be shown to be reasonable and correct when in the past it seemed odd to many. That alone should sound a warning to those who are quick to dismiss his testimony as nonsense.The computer beeping was a case in point. In spite of what the police claimed, we now know, based on the manufacturer's testimony, that his computer transmitter does beep. Gabe said he saw Tina panic and then saw her fall away and sink to the bottom serenely. The 'diving experts' who first heard Gabe's story when he surfaced confirmed this is what Gabe had said. But in their view, this was nonsense. I believe that anyone who knows anything about the stages of drowning would find Gabe's version of what happened to be very consistent with what occurs. I've gone into some depth on this matter in past posts. The same experts also claimed that you are weightless underwater. That is wrong unless a diver is neutrally buoyant. Inexperienced divers are often not neutrally buoyant. Given the weight Tina was carrying and the way she sank, she obviously wasn't neutrally buoyant.
Well, I got married once for poor reasons. Some of us are better single I think. 
Are you one of Tina's friends or family members so you know what they believe and why? 
