12-year-old drowns after friends try to save him from deep part of lake, NC cops say
A 12-year-old drowned after he went into a deep area of a North Carolina lake, officials say.
The child — whose name hasn’t been released — was in a swimming area on Hyco Lake at about 6:15 p.m. on Memorial Day, according to Person County Sheriff Dewey Jones.
“He actually stepped off the edge of a drop off, and no one was able to save him,” Jones told McClatchy in a phone interview.
The boy’s cousin was among the people who tried to rescue him on the water, Jones said.
The 12-year-old’s body was later found after his friends weren’t able to save him, WRAL reports.
The drowning happened near a Hyco Lake beach that was “installed last year,” The Courier-Times reports.
The lake — about 15 miles northwest of Roxboro — offers life jackets, according to The Courier-Times. The 12-year-old wasn’t wearing a life jacket and couldn’t swim, the website reports.
“The child was a Person County native and a student at Roxboro Community School,” reports ABC11, the News & Observer’s media partner.
This story was originally published May 28, 2019 at 1:22 PM with the headline "12-year-old drowns after friends try to save him from deep part of lake, NC cops say."
