NEWS: Car in the Lake

Today after work, as I was approaching my neighborhood, I noticed a lot of activity near the roundabout. At first, I thought it was just another traffic accident, with police and paramedics on scene. But got closer, I noticed that there were more of them than usual.

Then I was just going to drive home, but there was a long line of cars parked along the side, all the way to the first entrance and then some, so I turned in and asked some people on the street who were walking home. They told me that a car had driven into the retention pond.


I had been listening to NPR news summaries on the way home and the clouds were gathering so it was pretty much a set up.

I parked my car and walked over to the crowd of people scattered across the green. And I watched.

The woman talked about how there was a grandfather, grandmother, and possibly a grandson involved, and how you could see in the broken bushes the path the car must've taken.

We could see the paramedics give chest compressions/CPR to one of the passengers and then the paramedics taking them away.

The woman was trying to empathize and was sure that they were dead. Her sister had died in a car accident a couple weeks ago. She starting to analyze the safety of the roundabout. I told her that I liked it. She was very emotionally invested to what happened to these strangers, and I was emotionally untouched except for the realization of the perspective that these situations provides. I was Edward Norton's Tyler Durden touring support groups.

Here's the news story from Florida Today:

Divers pull 2 people from pond

BY KAUSTUV BASU
FLORIDA TODAY

Water accident. Brevard County Sherif's deputies and firefighter EMT's wait above water while others are trying to rescue two people from a submerged car in a retention pond in Viera on Friday. Christina Stuart, FLORIDA TODAY

A woman pulled out from a car which went into a pond near the traffic circle of Lake Andrew Drive and Wickham Road in Viera around 4:30 p.m. today has been pronounced dead at the Wuesthoff Medical Center in Rockledge, Brevard County Fire-Rescue said. A man who was also pulled out of the car by divers is in critical condition.

“Both the man and woman appear to be in their late 60s,” said Orlando Dominguez, spokesman for Brevard County Fire-Rescue.

Dominguez said the man was in cardiac arrest when he was taken out of the water and did not have a pulse.

“Our firefighters were able to revive him. He does have a pulse now but remains in critical condition,” he said.

The vehicle, described by witnesses as a blue sedan, remains in the water and a tow truck has been called to pull it out of the water. Hundreds of bystanders surrounded the pond, watching the rescue effort around 5 p.m.