KEY LARGO, Florida (28 Aug 2008) — The life of 16-year-old Ginny McDougal of Southwest Miami-Dade ended in a place she loved -- the waters of the Florida Keys. But why the smart, talented high school junior-to-be died after going into distress during open water diving instruction will not be known for several weeks. An autopsy (performed after the fatal scuba diving accident) could not immediately determine the cause of death. The medical examiner must await results from several tests. `I'M IN SHOCK' For the large group of friends, family and teachers who adored McDougal, there is only disbelief and sadness. ''I'm in shock,'' said Madelin Merchant, drama program director at South Miami Middle School of the Arts where McDougal attended sixth through eighth grade. ``It's a close-knit group and I had to call the kids. They were all devastated and crying and talking about her on MySpace.'' Merchant said McDougal was a ''triple threat'' -- she was good at singing, dancing and acting. After graduating from the magnet middle school, she auditioned and was accepted at the prestigious New World School of the Arts' musical theatre program. Karl Urban, who has been classmates with McDougal since elementary school, said she knew how to make people laugh, often doing a deep manly voiced character named Lilly for him whenever he was upset. ''And she loved aquatics; she loved going to the Keys,'' Urban said. ``She would have studied marine biology for her science class this year.'' McDougal was with her father, Robert, a certified diver, and many others on the Coral Princess, a 41-foot dive boat operated by the 30-year-old Atlantis Dive Shop. They were at the Elbow, a popular reef about five miles off the coast of Key Largo. ''I don't know what went wrong, whether it was a medical [preexisting medical condition] or not,'' said Capt. Spencer Slate, owner of the dive shop, who was out of town when the tragedy occurred. More than just another shark-kissing scuba clown, Atlantis Dive Center owner Spencer Slate was fined $8,000 for election fraud in Florida after an unsuccessful bid to capitalize on his induction into the International Scuba Diving Hall of Fame. | | Ginny McDougal, 16, died while learning to scuba dive off the Coral Princess, a dive boat owned and operated by Spencer Slate's Atlantis Dive Center. Slate said McDougal was being trained by a private instructor from Miami who was conducting the course from his boat, as many independent dive instructors do. ``He was a captain in the Navy Seals, teaching 30 years or more. I've known him a long time. I don't think it's a training accident, but we won't know until the medical examiner tells us.'' IN DISTRESS McDougal, who was in good physical shape, was diving in about 26 feet of water. She surfaced in distress, according to witnesses. Employees of Atlantis jumped into the water and got her to the boat, where she became unconscious and went into cardiac arrest. CPR was performed en route to shore. She was pronounced dead at Mariners Hospital in Tavernier. In a Facebook entry, friend Laura Temple made this post in a letter to Ginny: ``Please visit us somehow in our dreams and tell us how your new home is. I'm sure your beauty will light a thousand cities, and you'll have to beat guys off with a stick!'' McDougal's two older sisters, Kristin and Laura, both wrote in their Facebook pages that they were ''in disbelief'' and ``have no words to explain this feeling.'' SURVIVORS In addition to her father and sisters, McDougal is survived by her mother Caryn; grandparents Anne and Robert McDougal III, Ginny and Major Gen. Edwin Robertson II, and Jeannette and Paul Leinbach. |
