You ever heard the expression “An idle mind is the devils playground”? Well, it basically means no good comes out of being bored… when you’re bored you do things like jumping in a river, knowing good and well you cannot swim! Two young boys who were just fooling around, jumped into a river in the Bronx, and only one of them made it out alive. Come on kids.. check out the sad details!
A pair of 13-year-old cousins who never learned to swim were so desperate to cool off on Friday that they jumped in the Bronx River anyway — with one drowning to death and the other in critical condition after the two sank beneath the choppy waves, cops and witnesses said.
Erickson Villa was pulled from the water by FDNY divers and pronounced dead at St. Barnabas Hospital, where his cousin Gavin Wellington is still in critical condition.
The teens, who live blocks apart on Southern Boulevard, were part of a group that took a dip at Starlight Park near East 172 Street and Bronx River Avenue around 3 p.m.
“Witnesses saw them jump in and swim out and then they lost sight of them,” said NYPD spokesman Stephen Davis.
The FDNY, which got the call at 3:09 p.m., removed one boy from the water at around 3:30 p.m.
It took an hour for rescuers to find the second teen. A police source said he was “unresponsive.”
The area where the boys jumped into the water has a dock. The water around the dock is shallow but the river quickly gets deeper.
“We were all playing basketball and like six of them went over to the river and said they wanted to go in the water,” said Diaminique Mims, 15, who had been hanging with the boys.
“They both jumped in the water, they didn’t come back up in five minutes,” said Mims. “I don’t know why they went in the water. They were all just messing around.”
She said the cousins didn’t know how to swim and that a friend frantically rushed back over for help.
“Someone came running over and asked if any of us could swim,” said Mims. “We said ‘no.’ Another kid, George, went in after them, but he can’t swim either.”
A witness said the first boy that was rescued had “foam all over his mouth.”
The boys attend IS 98 several blocks away, cops said.
