PROVIDENCE, Rhode Island (18 Feb 2006) -- The chief medical examiner of Florida's Miami-Dade County yesterday called the 1999 diving death of Shelley Tyre a "homicidal drowning," while an underwater forensic investigator said his review of evidence drew one conclusion: Tyre's husband, David Swain, had attacked her in 80 feet of water. Testimony in Swain's wrongful wrongful-death civil trial then ended for the day with the jury hearing a videotaped deposition of a Warwick woman who said Swain made romantic advances to her eight months before his wife's death. Mary Grace Basler, a chiropractor, testified that she had rebuffed Swain's advances at first, telling him she wasn't interested because he was married. But about two weeks after Tyre died during a Caribbean diving vacation, Basler said she met Swain at an East Greenwich restaurant. In about two month's time, they were lovers. Yesterday's testimony by medical examiner Dr. Bruce A. Hyma and forensic investigator Craig Jenni was the first time in five days of testimony that any witnesses had so emphatically crossed the bridge of speculation and declared Tyre's death a killing -- and Swain the person responsible. Again, neither Swain nor a lawyer representing him were in the courtroom to challenge any of the witnesses' statements. Swain has so far chosen not to offer a defense in the case brought by Shelley Tyre's father, Richard. Swain, a former Jamestown Town Council member, appeared in the courthouse briefly Thursday and, with a lawyer representing Richard Tyre, met in chambers with Superior Court Judge Patricia A. Hurst to discuss a motion he filed to dismiss the suit. Afterward, outside the courthouse, Swain described his wife's death as a "tragic accident" in which he had no part. TYRE, 46, died on March 12, 1999, while diving off the Caribbean island of Tortola in the British Virgin Islands. Tyre and Swain were on vacation with another couple, Christian and Bernice Thwaites, of North Kingstown, and their 9-year-old son. The couples had chartered a sailboat, the Caribbean Soul, and on the last day that they were to dive, moored off Cooper's Island to explore the remote site of two tugboat wrecks. Tyre and Swain, both advanced scuba divers, went into the water first and separated during the dive, which wasn't unusual, said J. Renn Olenn, the lawyer representing Richard Tyre. Swain liked to take photographs while Tyre went off to count fish and study the nearby reef. Swain returned to the boat about 35 minutes later, and Christian Thwaites dropped into the water for his dive; the couples had agreed that two adults would remain on the boat at all times to watch the Thwaites' boy. Thwaites came across the first sign of trouble moments later: one of Shelley Tyre's yellow swim fins sticking in the sand, toe-first. He pulled the fin out and began searching for Tyre, expecting that she would be grateful that he had found her fin. Instead, he found her lying on her back on the sandy bottom with her eyes and mouth open. Thwaites dropped the fin and took Tyre up to the surface, where he tried to perform CPR. According to Thwaites' testimony earlier this week, Swain came to Thwaites' aid in the dive boat's dinghy and brought his wife aboard. When another boat answered the Caribbean Soul's mayday call, either Swain or Thwaites (it was unclear who during earlier testimony this week) told the responding dive master with CPR training not to attempt to resuscitate Tyre, that it was too late. TORTOLA POLICE ruled Tyre's death an accident "unless proven otherwise," and Swain has never been charged with a crime. But medical examiner Hyma testified yesterday that Tyre's broken equipment, found the following day by another diver, led him to believe there had been "some kind of violent struggle with another individual." | | Accused of killing his wife: PADI 5-Star IDC Ocean State Scuba owner David Swain. First, said Hyma, there was Tyre's broken dive mask. The pin holding one side of the strap in place was missing, indicating it had probably been ripped from the mask frame. Then there was Tyre's snorkel. The mouthpiece was missing. And there was the issue of Tyre's swim fin embedded toe-first into the sand. Earlier this week, a mechanical engineer who has designed several types of diving equipment showed the jury video footage of experiments he performed on the fin. Under normal conditions, the fin would have sunk to the bottom heel-first, testified Bill Oliver, leading him to hypothesize that some "external force" had driven the fin into the sand. Finally, said Hyma, a certified diver for 36 years, there was no reason for Tyre to have drowned: she had plenty of air in her tanks; no medical condition that would have interrupted her normal breathing, and as a veteran of more than 350 logged dives, she was well versed in emergency response. "There is no reason in my professional opinion she would not have been able to effectuate a self rescue if she had the opportunity," said Hyma. "Her air supply was shut off." Jenni, the underwater forensic investigator, told the jury he had come to the same conclusion after inspecting Tyre's diving equipment and witnessing a deposition Swain underwent some time ago. HAD TYRE ENCOUNTERED any other type of emergency than an attack, her first act would have been to drop her weight belt, so she could get to the surface as fast as possible. But Tyre was found with her weight belt still on. Both regulators -- her primary breathing apparatus and an emergency back up -- were both working perfectly, said Jenni. Based on the amount of oxygen still in Tyre's tank when she was found, Jenni and other expert witnesses have determined Tyre was underwater for about eight minutes before she stopped breathing. Divers normally swim about one foot per second while underwater, Jenni said. That is an important calculation when considering what Swain said during his deposition: that after about a five-minute descent to the wrecks together, he set off alone and made one revolution around one of the sunken boats. After considering the length of the wreck and Swain's own mapping of his swim, drawn at his deposition, Jenni figured it would have taken Swain about three more minutes to get back to where he had left Tyre near one of the tug's sterns. "At that precise time, Shelly was no longer breathing," said Jenni. And "Mr. Swain was in her vicinity." Even if she was already unconscious on the sea floor, Swain would have had to see her, Jenni said. But he came up alone. "The only conclusion," said Jenni, "is David Swain attacked Shelley Tyre." The trial resumes Monday. SOURCE - The Providence Journal |
