Visitors were mostly unaffected by the third and fourth drownings at New York City beaches this season, matching the total number of swimming deaths last summer.
The scene at Coney Island on Saturday was typical for a humid and hot weekend in July: colorful towels, tents and umbrellas packed into the strip of sand.
Along the famed boardwalk in Brooklyn, signs warned visitors of the potential dangers posed by lightning or strong currents, and delineated where and when it was safe to swim.
Yet in one area, closed off by small red flags staked into the sand, a handful of people ventured into the water with no lifeguards present. To the east, where two teenage sisters drowned in the water the night before, swimmers splashed around, unaware or undeterred, enjoying an escape from the city’s heat as temperatures peaked just below 90 degrees.
The sisters who drowned Friday night, Zainab Mohammed, 17, and Aisha Mohammed, 18, were the second pair of teenagers to drown off New York City’s beaches already this summer. At nearby Jacob Riis Park beach in Queens, two boys, ages 16 and 17, drowned just two weeks earlier. Both incidents happened on especially hot days, after the beaches closed but before the sun had set.
On Saturday, another man died after being pulled from the water off Inwood Hill Park in Upper Manhattan, according to the police. He was transported to NewYork-Presbyterian Allen Hospital, where he was pronounced dead.
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Source: Elections - nytimes.com
