Saturday, 2 July 2011

Dead body went unnoticed in public swimming pool for days | The Raw Story

Dead body went unnoticed in public swimming pool for days

By Agence France-Presse
Friday, July 1st, 2011 -- 6:23 pm

NEW YORK — Massachusetts officials have closed a busy public swimming pool after a woman's dead body went unnoticed in the water for two days as people continued to swim, the Boston Globe reported Friday.

The permit for the state-run swimming pool expired six months ago, and a city inspector who examined the site on Tuesday -- just hours before the body surfaced -- did not see the remains because the water was so murky, the newspaper reported.

The victim, Haitian immigrant Marie Joseph, 36, was last seen going down a slide into the Veterans Memorial Pool in the town of Fall River on Sunday.

Her body was not found until it surfaced late Tuesday, when local teenagers jumped the fence for an after-hours swim.

The water may have become murky because the body had begun to decompose, the Globe reported.

Joseph went to the pool with two other adults and six children, a neighbor told the Globe.

A 9-year-old boy that went down the slide just before Joseph tried to alert lifeguards but was ignored, according to Veronica Reis, a friend of the victim.

Copyright © 2011 AFP. All rights reserved

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