Man Drowns at Foster-Arend

A sad story today

Man drowns in pond at Foster-Arend Park
6/26/2007 7:40:18 AM
By Dawn Schuett
Post-Bulletin, Rochester MN

A young man drowned Monday evening in the pond at Foster-Arend Park in northeast Rochester.

An Olmsted County Sheriff’s Office diver found the victim’s body at 9:43 p.m., according to Rick Lovett of the Rochester Fire Department. Lovett said the victim was a black man in his early 20s.

Witnesses said the man was swimming toward an inflatable raft when he went under the water shortly after 8 p.m. Another man was paddling the raft across the pond.

Lynae Mohler, 20, of Rochester, and a friend were swimming nearby when they saw the man in the water start to struggle to stay above the surface. He couldn’t have been more than 20 feet from shore, Mohler said, but he seemed to run out of strength to swim the distance.

Mohler and five to six other people at the pond tried to find him just after he had gone under, she said. “But the water was too deep, and you could only see about a foot in front of you.”

Members of the Rochester Fire Department, Rochester Police Department, Olmsted County Sheriff’s Office and its dive team and Gold Cross responded to the scene.

“It’s always a tragedy when we lose someone with a drowning,” Lovett said. “It’s hard on everybody.”

I still think that this could be prevented by simply closing the lake to swimming. We have public pools to swim in. It does not sound as though this person was within the marked swimming area. What needs to be done out there is to post a full time officer there and ticket/fine heavily anyone found in the water outside of the marked swimming area.

While the article says nothing about it and may not even be a factor here, I also feel that NO alcohol should be allowed in city parks and that ANY recreation where water is involved have a zero tolerance for alcohol use. Past drownings have been attributed to boozing out there.

Indeed this is sad. BUT, it is entirely preventable. I guess all the sludge the city dumped in there was put in the wrong place,eh?

Funny I should find this thread this morning. Myself and a buddy were at FA fishing last night and were actually two of the first people in the water looking for this gentleman. We were fishing in the NE corner and one of the guys in our group heard some girls yelling. We ran over and to our surprise there was only 1 person in the water looking and well over 50 bystanders on shore.

3 of us dropped our gear (and most of our clothes) and jumped in and started combing. Unfortunately this was north of the beach and the dropoff is incredible. At 15ft out from shore we could not find bottom, and we consider ourselves pretty good divers.

Very sad to see this happen, it was a strange and uncomfortable event. My condolences and prayers go out to the family.

Quote:

---

I still think that this could be prevented by simply closing the lake to swimming. We have public pools to swim in. It does not sound as though this person was within the marked swimming area. What needs to be done out there is to post a full time officer there and ticket/fine heavily anyone found in the water outside of the marked swimming area.

While the article says nothing about it and may not even be a factor here, I also feel that NO alcohol should be allowed in city parks and that ANY recreation where water is involved have a zero tolerance for alcohol use. Past drownings have been attributed to boozing out there.

Indeed this is sad. BUT, it is entirely preventable. I guess all the sludge the city dumped in there was put in the wrong place,eh?

---

Yes, save me from myself please….

very sad, prayers for the family and friends

Glad to hear you made an effort. I think a lot of people are in the “shock” stage and don’t quite know what to do. I commend you and your friends for giving a try. My prayers and condolences to the family.

One thing I don’t understand is why there are so many drownings at Foster Arends and you never hear of them happening out at Chesterwoods. Pretty much the same set up for swimming.

I agree old quarries are never safe to swim in
it needs to be closed to swimming
how many have to drown to realise this

I have heard in the past that there is cold springs which cause swimmers to cramp. But how would the water stay so cold to cause cramping up to 3 feet below the surface? The surface temp. should stay pretty much the same I would think.

The beach/swimming area is designated for a reason. Just outside of the ropes the water drops down to about 15 feet straight out from the beach and deeper yet [about 20 feet] to the north where I think this drowning happened. The deeper water does have spring activity in it in many areas. The problem with the springs at Foster is that they will migrate. This activity is very well displayed towards the north end of the lake during the winter….lots of people have thought they were walking on good ice only to find out how wet they can get in short order.

I was told by a city official that the reason the beach stays open is that one of the conditions of the city acquiring the parkland in the first place was that they had to agree to openly permit swimming. If this is the case, then perhaps the city should fence in an area where swimmers HAVE to remain and simply make it illegal to enter the water on the rest of the lake. And then enforce the action. They could even make it unlawful to fish within the area enclosed as there are few trout to be found there anyway.

Maybe the city needs to find themselves in a court trying to explain why they have a maintained beach, but not a lifeguard. The city claims there is no money for them, but they have this Kenvold character on the payroll with an annual salary well over a hundred grand. Maybe they should have all employees who make over the 100,000 dollar mark have to donate ten percent of that salary to city programs that need help.

Every other year someone dies in that lake and not because there is a lack of signage. Signs are everywhere. It is the people who use this area that have to be accountable, because, apparently, the city cannot afford to be.

SRBit mentioned that Chester has similar beach arrangements. The difference is that one has to PAY to use that beach and alcohol use is watched very closely. The park at Chester has employees who monitor things. Foster is wide open to all kinds of un-supervised garbage at no charge. IF all swimmers had to pay a fee to use the water for swimming within prescribed boundaries and if the city would put some supervision out there, these events would likely stop or be an annual occurence.

Maybe they ought to charge a few bucks to swim and that may offset the cost of a life gaurd. They could set hours like a pool does and thats that.
On the other hand, why blame Rochester so much? They are providing something for people to do and use free of charge. They put up signs and try to warn people of the dangers. What else can you do? People read and know the rules and should assume the risks. If they chose to do things that are risky or over there limits, well what can you do. If you close Fosters, charge money, or whatever, those same people will migrate to some where else to do whatever they feel like they want to do.

I wasn’t trying to find fault with Rochester. The city is feeling the same money crunch right now that everyone is with our current state government. I do get a bit disgruntled when we have people on city payrolls making that kind of money when the “important” things get axed, though.

There may be answers to this dilemna, but no-one seems to be able to find them. And the cost is extreme.

you used to have to pay to swim out there thats why its all fenced in and they have the changing rooms with a thing in the middle for a person to take your money why not put it back the way it used to be it would solve some problems atleast thats my feelings