Article on Death In Ginnie Springs

[Omisson]

Knowing with "relative certainty" is not knowing at all. It's like being partly pregnant.

No it's nothing at all like that.

You just don't want to accept the reality.

Even a full autopsy will not reveal the specific oxygen overload of an Oxtox hit- dissipation/diffusion would prevent such analysis.

The ONLY thing you use to cling to in your misleading article that rationalizes (to you) that there is some "unknown" is that a police forensic lab did not measure the bottle's oxygen content.

The question is WHY WOULD THEY NEED TO? At the scene - a dive instructor- with years of cave experience produced an oxygen analyzer. In front of police and others- the gas was tested. It showed +\- 98% oxygen. The bottle was marked OXYGEN. In order to calibrate the analyzer before the measurement it would have to be "zeroed" to air (21%). So there is no reason that anyone else would need to be performing the analysis. The bottle markings matched the contents. Police would not need to farm out forensic work to reconfirm something in a non criminal investigation. The death was not suspicious, it was -as the English like to say- misadventure.

Because you desperately cling to the incorrect notion police should have done something more does not make it any less real that the sole and rationally undeniable cause of death was operator error.

Absent some evidence of foul play or someone else's contribution - police do not engage in fishing expeditions when a cause of death is patently obvious. When they come upon a man with a gunshot wound to his head, consistent with self infliction- powder burns on his dominant hand, a loaded and recently discharged firearm in it, sitting in a room locked from the inside with a suicide note written in the handwriting of the deceased- and having had witnesses describe the recent behavior of the deceased as suicidal.... Absent any other facts supporting a different conclusion- it's ruled a suicide. Could it be an elaborately framed murder? Yes. Likely, no. Going to be treated as such forensically? No. If the police don't have anything to suggest foul play there won't be a substantial forensic inquiry.

Similarly- in this case- we have:

1) a clearly marked oxygen tank

2) a test confirming that content immediately after the incident by a trained professional in front of witnesses that the content of such tank matches the description on the tank

3) numerous witnesses who said they tried to get the deceased to analyze the contents before the dive because of the tanks markings

4) the deceased's refusal to do so and statement he knew the contents were air

5) a seizure at depth -consistent with oxygen toxicity -while using that very same oxygen labeled tank

6) a similar appearing bottle also marked oxygen not used by the deceased during this dive but in his supplies from his Doria trip

Ockham's Razor applies.

Pregnant is Pregnant.

 

[tursiops]

This certainty-uncertainty thing is pretty interesting. There's a strategy for dealing with uncertainty that involves dealing with different levels of uncertainty: Level One is that you don't know everything about the future, but it doesn't change your decisions...the "residual uncertainty" doesn't affect you. Level Two is that the future is unknown, but it clusters into specific scenarios, and you can plan for each of them. Level Three is no clustering, but bounded; you know it won't be worse than this or better than that, or bigger than this or smaller than that. Your best strategy is to try and take actions that will resolve the uncertainty into specific scenarios...i.e., change Level 3 to Level 2....and plan against those scenarios. Level Four is pure, swirling chaos....which is rarely the case and usually quite ephemeral. The OP wants to paint the world as either Level 1 or Level 4...you either know everything or you know nothing. But Level 2 is the case here: he toxed, or something else happened, and ALL the data point toward toxing, NONE toward any other scenario.

 

[gianaameri]

3) numerous witnesses who said they tried to get the deceased to analyze the contents before the dive because of the tanks markings

4) the deceased's refusal to do so and statement he knew the contents were air

The deceased is deceased and cannot put forward his side of the story (fact, not hypothesis or hearsay).

 

[tomfcrist]

The deceased is deceased and cannot put forward his side of the story (fact, not hypothesis or hearsay).

Ok...Lets disregard the divers that were with him...they cant be expected to be truthful. Lets also disregard his friends who have posted here that he was commonly careless and had a cavalier attitude. While we are at it we can all don our tin foil hats so the aliens cant read our thoughts.

 

[Lorenzoid]

The deceased is deceased and cannot put forward his side of the story (fact, not hypothesis or hearsay).

Even in a trial, if someone is deceased, that generally raises an exception to the general prohibition against hearsay testimony, and the court might very well allow someone else to testify as to what he heard the deceased person say.

 

[gianaameri]

Even in a trial, if someone is deceased, that generally raises an exception to the general prohibition against hearsay testimony, and the court might very well allow someone else to testify as to what he heard the deceased person say.

A very valid testimony if it is from a person unrelated to the incident and unconnected to the the deceased - provided he/she was present and directly witnessed the events he/she is recounting.

Were there any witnesses in this case that fit those parameters?

 

[Basking Ridge Diver]

Were there any witnesses in this case that fit those parameters?

So your premise is - everyone is a liar/cheat/unreliable unless they pass your sniff test? Seriously?

 

[HIGHwing]

Here's some facts. If a diver swims the ballroom at an average of 65ft, that's a PPO2 of ~2.9x. Once you pass the lips, through the key hole, and pass the park bench, you're looking at perhaps 80 - 100ffw before the Hill 400 where the seizure occurred, that's a PPO2 of ~3.4x to ~4.0x.

If this was a DUI case the prosecutor would say the deceased had a blood content of 2 to 3 times the legal limit. Think about it...

 

[Stoo]

The author and I exchanged some comments after his article. Carlos was an "acquaintance" of mine... we moved in the same circles and had done a bunch of open water dives together. I knew him to be a competent diver, who had amassed a large number of certifications and dives in his short diving life. He had only been certified for 3 or 4 years at the time of the accident, but he had been well-trained and dove a lot. While he was known to be something of a bully at times, and certainly "cocky" and extremely sure of his abilities, he was also a man with a big heart and loved by many around him. None-the-less, as much as I was having trouble understanding how such a stupid accident could happen, this "walked like a duck and quacked like a duck", so I concluded that it was, in fact, a duck. His refusal to check his tank when challenged by the other members of his team was, in my opinion, entirely consistent with Carlos' personality.

Both the author and I call Ontario home. Here, dive accidents are investigated quite thoroughly and I think that that is mostly because we have a Coroner who was an avid diver, former Navy dive medicine specialist and someone who is enthusiastic about understanding how and why recreational (as in non-military or commercial) accidents occur. He spent his post-Naval career as a family doctor/Coroner in Tobermory where we have had more than our share of accidents and fatalities over the years.

The other reason accidents are thoroughly investigated, is that we are home to Defence Research and Development Canada (formerly DCIEM).. a quasi-military, government organization that does all sorts of research in hyper and hypobaric medicine. They developed some of the best deco table for cold water decades ago, and one of the first electronic dive-computers (I was involved in testing a prototype... got bend!) and all sorts of other stuff.

Anyway, my point is that here, in Ontario, it is relatively simple to bring some significant resources to bear when investigating dive accidents. We forget that that isn't the case everywhere. And when an accident appears to be cut and dried, the local police would rely on outside experts... some of the best happened to be on-site that day.

 

[Lorenzoid]

A very valid testimony if it is from a person unrelated to the incident and unconnected to the the deceased - provided he/she was present and directly witnessed the events he/she is recounting.

Were there any witnesses in this case that fit those parameters?

If you're referring to bias, while a witness who is unrelated to the incident might be less biased, he also might not have as much information as the witness who was there and says he heard what the victim said. In the legal system, judges and juries are expected to sort out whether testimony might be biased and give it whatever weight they believe it deserves. But to get back to incidents like this one, the authorities who arrive on the scene are trusted to make similar judgments. They question witnesses on the scene and make judgments as to whether there is any reason not to believe what the witness say. They take potential bias into account. If what the witnesses say sounds completely reasonable and in line with everything else the investigators hear and observe, they do not need to proceed deeper into the investigative process.

You're asking for a different system than what we have presently. You're entitled to wish we had a different system, but the idea that in this case the authorities did something other than what is "routine" is incorrect. From what I have read, it appears they did exactly what is routine.