Drowning stuns community

A Saint John area man is dead after a drowning accident on Douglas Lake in the city's east side early Sunday morning, Sgt. Chris Morris with the Saint John Police Force said on Sunday afternoon.

Morris said the 51-year-old man was canoeing on the lake without a life jacket with one other person, a male, some time before 5 a.m. that morning.

Karen Bradley awoke shortly after 5 a.m. on Sunday to the sound of a man's voice repeatedly calling out a name. When Bradley's dog jumped from the bed, she dashed outside to see what was happening.

"As soon as I got down the stairs I grabbed my sneakers and I ran down to Greg's (a neighbour) yard and into the lake," she said.

When Bradley got to the shoreline of Douglas Lake across the street from her Morrison Road home, she found a man standing in the water, still calling for someone.

Mike Breen and Kim Making live on Morrison Road. They too ran down to the water after hearing the man shouting for help. He later told the couple the dead man was his brother and they'd been celebrating a 25th wedding anniversary at a home on nearby Juniper Road.

The pair said Bradley had already been in the water trying to help when they arrived.

As Bradley looked, she said she saw an overturned canoe and a life jacket floating nearby.

"I just said, 'Where is he?' (The man) said, 'He's in the water,'" she recounted.

"I just said, 'Is this a joke?' And he said, 'No. He's in the water.'"

As she scanned from her vantage point on a nearby dock, she saw a man's body near the bottom of the lake.

She said she dove in again, this time to the bottom, and pulled the man to the surface.

Greg Tims, another neighbour who owns the dock closest to where the man was found, paddled out to Bradley and helped her pull the victim to the surface. Breen helped to pull the man ashore.

Tims said the man pulled from the water did not look good and didn't appear to be breathing.

Breen estimated the man was found only 10 feet from the shoreline.

"He was in 10 feet (of water) standing up. If he'd come closer to shore, he could've stood up. The three of us (Breen, Tims and Bradley) dragged him along the side of the wharf onto the shore line to start doing CPR," Breen said.

Making called 911 and stayed on the phone for medical instructions.

Breen and Tims' wife began CPR and attempted to resuscitate the man until medical help arrived.

Making and Breen, sitting at their kitchen table on Morrison Road were composed, but said they still felt shaken by the incident.

"It's like it didn't really even happen," Making said. "It's like a bad dream."

"There's this sort of mental picture every time I close my eyes," Breen said.

Bradley said the experience was "surreal."

The four neighbours said they didn't know the victim and were unfamiliar with the other man.

Morrison Road and Juniper Lane border Douglas Lake, a narrow, but picturesque body of water lined with docks and colourful homes.

Police have not released the name of the victim, but said next of kin have been notified.

[IMG]http://harvest.canadaeast.com/image.php?id=518460&size=500x0[/IMG]
This is a view of Douglas Lake not far from where a man's body was pulled from the water early Sunday morning.