PALAU HANTU (21 Feb 2007) -- A scuba diver died Monday while diving at Manatee Springs State Park in Chiefland — the second diver death in the last week in North Florida. Bobby Rothel, 19, of Panhandle, Texas, was found by rescue divers near an underwater area called Catfish Hole in Manatee Springs, according to Sgt. Scott Tummond with the Levy County Sheriff's Office. Rothel was airlifted to Shands at the University of Florida after being rescued from the water around 1 p.m. Monday, but Tummond said Rothel was pronounced dead at the hospital. Tummond would not go into specifics about how the young man got trapped under the water Monday. He said the medical examiner's office will be doing an autopsy, but drowning is the likely cause of death. "He did run out of air," Tummond said. "He was diving with two buddies and, at some point, got separated from the buddies." Tummond said Rothel and his friends were not actually cave diving, but they were diving in an area that would fall under the category of cavern diving — where an overhead obstruction does not allow direct access to the surface, he said. Monday's incident marks the second diver death in less than a week, with the Lafayette County Sheriff's Office reporting that a certified cave diver from Virginia died last week while diving alone in a spring along the Suwannee River. Lafayette County Sheriff Carson McCall said last week that the body of Ronald Wayne Simmons, 53, of Charlottesville, Va., was recovered Thursday in a remote spring in northwest Lafayette County known as Allan Millpond Springs. | | Simmons was reported missing Wednesday when he didn't show up at a friend's house in Alachua County, and searchers located his vehicle near the spring run that leads to the Suwannee River. Certified cave divers from around the area were called in to search for Simmons. They located his body about 300 feet from the mouth of a shallow cave, and by looking at dive journals, investigators said Simmons apparently had been inside the same cave as many as 40 times before last week's fatal dive. SOURCE - The Gainesville SunSCUBA FORUMDISCUSS THIS TOPIC - Dive in and have your say at Scuba Forum |
