Teen drowns in Georgia lake when game goes wrong

[groundloop]

Source: CBS News

A teenager drowned just hours after graduating high school when he was tied to a shopping cart and pushed into a lake as part of a game with friends, officials said.

Chance Werner, 18, of Cartersville died at Lake Allatoona about 35 miles northwest of Atlanta, Georgia Department of Natural Resources spokeswoman Melissa Cummings said. His body was found early Sunday morning in about 30 feet of water and he was still tied to the cart.

Cummings said that in the game Saturday night, participants sat in a shopping cart that was tied to a pole. Others pushed the cart to the end of the dock so that the person sitting in it would be flung into the water. Cummings said that when Werner's turn came, the cart was tied to the teen instead of a pole. The weight of the cart pulled him under.

Read more: http://www.cbsnews.com/news/teen-drowns-in-georgia-lake-when-game-goes-wrong/

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STUPID STUPID STUPID. I don't know how kids come up with idiot 'games' like this.

[abelenkpe]

1. So his friends killed him?

How could high school graduates not understand that the cart would pull him under?

[Ms. Toad]

2. How on earth

do you mistake a pole for the person sitting in the cart when you are anchoring the shopping cart?

Dumb game, but even so - how do you make a mistake like that?

[mahatmakanejeeves]

3. "how do you make a mistake like that?"

Hyatt Regency walkway collapse

Investigation

Three days after the disaster, Wayne G. Lischka, an architectural engineer hired by The Kansas City Star newspaper, discovered a significant change of the original design of the walkways. Reportage of the event later earned the Star and its associated publication the Kansas City Times a Pulitzer Prize for local news reporting in 1982. Radio station KJLA would later earn a National Associated Press award for its reporting on the night of the disaster.

The two walkways were suspended from a set of 1.25 in (32 mm) diameter steel tie rods, with the second floor walkway hanging directly under the fourth floor walkway. The fourth floor walkway platform was supported on three cross-beams suspended by steel rods retained by nuts. The cross-beams were box girders made from C-channel strips welded together lengthwise, with a hollow space between them. The original design by Jack D. Gillum and Associates specified three pairs of rods running from the second floor to the ceiling. Investigators determined eventually that this design supported only 60 percent of the minimum load required by Kansas City building codes.

Havens Steel Company, the contractor responsible for manufacturing the rods, objected to the original plan of Jack D. Gillum and Associates, since it required the whole of the rod below the fourth floor to be screw threaded in order to screw on the nuts to hold the fourth floor walkway in place. These threads would probably have been damaged and rendered unusable as the structure for the fourth floor was hoisted into position with the rods in place. Havens therefore proposed an alternate plan in which two separate sets of tie rods would be used: one connecting the fourth floor walkway to the ceiling, and the other connecting the second floor walkway to the fourth floor walkway.

This design change would prove fatal. In the original design, the beams of the fourth floor walkway had to support only the weight of the fourth floor walkway, with the weight of the second floor walkway supported completely by the rods. In the revised design, however, the fourth floor beams were required to support both the fourth floor walkway and the second floor walkway hanging from it. With the load on the fourth-floor beams doubled, Havens' proposed design could bear only 30 percent of the mandated minimum load (as opposed to 60 percent for the original design).

Difference between the design and construction of the walkway support system.


Investigators found that changes to the design of the walkway's steel tie rods were the cause of its failure.

[exboyfil]

8. Free Body Diagrams are your friends

My daughter is a high school senior going off to college in mechanical engineering in August. I had her watch one of the many documentaries on this disaster. It made an impression on me in my engineering ethics class in college 30 years ago - it still does today as a practicing engineer.

Doing stupid stuff around water or heights are also two big no nos.

[Ms. Toad]

10. Sorry - but that is not even on the same planet

as mistaking a body for a pole

[jakeXT]

5. He tied it around his belt loops according to this video

It's still confusing to me

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/05/26/chance-werner-drowns_n_5395048.html

[Ms. Toad]

11. Yup -

still confusing. It had to be deliberate - weaving a rope through most belt loops is not usually accidental - so what was he thinking. And presumably he could swim well enough to escape from the cart had he not been tied - so if it was only attached to his belt loops, ditch the pants and head for the surface.

[JohnnyRingo]

14. "Ditch the pants"

That's part of what for me was a funny story, but it points out how one doesn't consider simple solutions during times of panic.

I was working on my car engine several years ago, and when I was done I slammed the hood down. I immediately realized I'd closed my shirt sleeve in the hood and was instantly shocked that I was trapped and alone. I tried reaching the hood release but it was just too far. My mind reeled as I struggled, and I imagined relatives stopping over one day, only to find my withered bird eaten skeleton laying there with the shirt sleeve still trapped by the hood. After an embarrassing ten or fifteen seconds, I realized I could just slip my shirt off and go have lunch.

Perhaps the young man sadly spent the panic filled few seconds he had to escape trying to untie the rope. I don't always tell people how stupid I am, but I still hadn't thought of your obvious solution, even as I was reading the story.

[Ms. Toad]

17. Probably my lifesaving training.

And dive training were why I thought of it. Always think of what you can ditch if you are being dragged down. Tying his body to the shopping cart would have been a much tougher escape - but belt loops or belt should have been easy.

And, sadly, too many people who play around water don't think of taking basic water safety courses. When we go to the lake with my family, the rule for anyone swimming around the pontoon without a life jacket was you had to either be an adult (so you could make your own decisions) or had to have passed the highest water safety course the red cross (or equivalent) offered. That left my mom and I paddling about, since the other adults knew their limitations none of the kids (despite being pretty good untrained swimmers) hadn't had training in the kinds of skills one might need to handle the unexpected (reinforced for my mother and I by years of also teaching as instructors in the Red Cross courses, and for me in dive training where one of the early skills you learn is how to ditch anything that might drag you down it the BC system fails). And neither of us would have been paddling about without the other, or someone similarly trained, as a back up.

My guess is that none of the kids involved had training - either for self-protection, or to attempt a rescue. Just really dumb - it is tragedy that this young man paid with his life.

[JohnnyRingo]

23. I live very near a man made lake here in Ohio.

Mosquito Lake was created shortly after WWII by the Army Corp of Civil Engineers. In those 60 some years, 63 people have drowned, including some close acquaintances and friends.

To put that in perspective, only 41 drivers have been killed racing in the Indy 500 in more than 100 years, a sport we consider too dangerous for all but a few.

Mosquito Lake almost swallowed me once about 15 years ago. I haven't been on a boat since.

[armed_and_liberal]

4. No Chance

No more

[tenderfoot]

13. Oh... aren't you cute.

[grilled onions]

6. Another"game" we never had years ago

I can almost see a 10 yr old thinking this was a great game(silly surely, but dangerous had not come into their minds yet) however at 18 there should be a hint of common sense. Being a young father he should have at least thought of his young boy and what would happen if, he, the father, died long before his son was of age. These are our leaders of tomorrow and yet how many take that leap from six pack parties during high school to those keg parties and silly/dangerous stunts in college. It seems the immaturity age is much longer than it used to be.

[giftedgirl77]

7. Just dumb & for no reason...

Been there done that my friend ran & dove in the same lake we had been swimming in for years one night, yes alcohol was involved. Snapped his neck & died right there, we never got a chance to stop him & to this day don't know why he decided it was suddenly deeper.

[exboyfil]

9. My daughter's friend wanted to go illegal cliff diving

I told my daughter to tell her friend that she did not intend to push her wheelchair around to every class next year in college.

[jwirr]

12. Sounds more like bullying than a game.

[Ms. Toad]

18. I didn't see any signs of bullying

Just a bunch of kids - likely under the influence of alcohol - seeking thrills.

My daughter & her cousins tried all sorts of stunts with flotation devices, docks, speedboats, and jetskis to increase the thrill of just being in the water - all under the watchful eye of adults trained in water safety, and all wearing PFDs. But at that age, thrill seeking coupled with a sense of immortality and some lack of common sense is pretty common.

[jwirr]

21. Then I would guess that there are some heartbroken kids who will never forget and probably will

end their prank days a bit early. Sorry for all of them.

[valerief]

15. If 5-year-olds did that, it would be a stupid accident. This looks like murder, even to

attempt it.

[bpj62]

16. Top 20 Stunts gone wrong.

A recent episode of the this show had a group of adults using a shopping cart and bungee jumping off a platform. The last gentlemen was accidently locked into the cart and his buddies pushed him into the river thinking that he would float out of the basket. The man had the foresight to recognize he was locked into the cart and was able to un snap it and escape. This clearly some strange game that is going on in rural America. Reality TV should not be showing this stuff but kids will somehow figure it out.

[Nye Bevan]

19. I've never seen any kind of warning label on a supermarket cart

cautioning against this kind of activity.

[jakeXT]

20. That would be a long list

[SkatmanRoth]

22. Play red neck game; win red neck prize. n/t