Hey, there! Log in / Register
Body of missing BC student found in Chestnut Hill Reservoir
By adamg on Wed, 04/11/2012 - 8:21am
Updated 12 p.m.
Channel 4 reports officials have identified the body found floating in Chestnut Hill Reservoir this morning as Franco Garcia, a BC student last seen leaving a Cleveland Circle bar on Feb. 22.
State Police and Boston Fire crews started arriving at the Chestnut Hill Avenue side of the reservoir around 8 a.m., after a passerby noticed a body in the water.
Free tagging:
Ad:
Support Universal Hub
Help keep Universal Hub going. If you like what we're up to and want to help out, please consider a (completely non-deductible) contribution.
Comments
I predicted this right after it happened.
It just took a while for his body to bloat and float. At least the family has closure. Here's a link to your story and my comment:
http://www.universalhub.com/2012/bc-student-missing
m'kay jonbowen do you want a
m'kay jonbowen do you want a gold star, a reward, or your own reality show?
condolences to the Garcia family if this is indeed Franco, hopefully this mystery can be cleared up.
jonbowen
round of applause. i never even considered that huge body of water 100 yards away from maryanns could be connected. brilliant! any theories on the J.F.K. thing?
+1000
n/t
.
.
Good for you.
So did I.
But I wasn't a callous ghoul about it.
I also didn't shamelessly post a link boasting my prediction.
Leveraging another family's pain for shameless self promotion.
You are a bigger tool than a ten foot screwdriver.
Just trying to save everybody some time and a headache.
But of course the police that were dispatched to find him couldn't which just prolonged the agony for the family.
You called me a callous ghoul...
and the only image that comes to my mind is Casper the Friendly Ghost working construction.
Actually
Jeff F did in the post from February - I just found it to be quite fitting.
He's filing his nails
... while they're dragging the lake.
Ah, who doesn't love Elvis???
Ah, who doesn't love Elvis???
This is not something to brag about
if you have any sense of decency, that is.
No official word yet...
...that it's Garcia.
And they sent divers in to troll the lake/reservoir for a week. Kinda hard to believe they'd miss a guy that big.
DA's office has confirmed
the body is Garcia's.
State Police will have to explain if this is the missing student
I acknowledge that signs point to this being the missing student, but I'm not willing to go out on that limb until there is a positive ID.
If this does turn out to be the missing student, however, the Department of State Police is going to have a time explaining how it is that a search that consumed the amount of resources that it did, in a relatively small body of water with no real natural inlets or outlets or unpredictable currents to speak of, failed to turn up the body sooner.
I've never searched for a body underwater, but ...
I can't imagine it's the easiest of things. There was a similarly massive search for that guy who fell into the harbor at Long Wharf, and his body didn't turn up for nine months.
So many factors
I'm with you, Adam. The body could have been entangled on something that prevented it from surfacing. True,Eugene Losik didn't surface for 9 months and divers conducted an extensive search off Long Wharf. I wonder if search dogs were used for Franco at the Reservoir. Does anyone know? Search dogs tracked Eugene's scent right to the water's edge. In any case, this is so sad for this person and his/her family.
Clarification of my comment concerning the State Police search
Understood, and that's precisely why I made the point about a smallish body of water, no real current, no 10 foot tides twice per day, etc. Finding a human body in a large body of water is undoubtedly difficult (hell, the people from DCR didn't see one in a pool), but finding it in an extension of the ocean seems like it would be markedly more difficult than it might have been in this situation.
Look, I think that the State Police are an excellent law enforcement organization - hands down the best I have ever worked with. I worked very closely with them for many years of my career and have the utmost respect for almost every person in the organization with whom I had the opportunity to collaborate.
I was merely stating what in retrospect was probably obvious - that the msm in particular is going to be asking how the body was missed if indeed it is that of Mr. Garcia - particularly given the facts that, as I recall, the search involved divers, sonar, and lots of other resources. I know that the State Police will be asking the same question internally, and with much more force and meaning than that of the msm. I also believe that if this turns out to be poor Mr. Garcia, no one will feel worse than the SP personnel who participated in the initial search.
I did not intend to disparage the State Police. I intended only to point out that there will be difficult questions about the search if this turns out to be the body of Mr. Garcia.
Too much we don't know
First of all, "no current" is a relative term. Anybody who swims or boats in the lakes and rivers of this are knows that open water will have currents - maybe not directional or predictable ones - but currents. For example, springs coming in under water generate them, wind does too, as does topography.
Secondly, we don't know the circumstances under which this body made it into the water. The person may have swam out, they body may have been weighted or tied down, it may have entered the water after the search (if there was foul play or it isn't Mr. Garcia) ... we don't know any of this. We may never know any of this.
My sympathies to this tortured family, regardless, and to the people who found the body and pulled the body from the water.
Best Swirly comment
in a long time. Well said.
Bodies
Typically don't float until they decompose. Right on cue we got warm weather the past 2-3 weeks, and now there's a body on the surface.
as for the search, lots of things can happen. My guess was there's too much stuff on the bottom to dredge / net effectively and that it's a semi-polluted body of water and visibility was probably really, really poor.
Lots of people went looking for the Titanic before they found it too.
In re “it's a semi-polluted body of water” — is it so?
The Chestnut Hill Reservoir is part of the regional drinking water supply. Is it really “polluted” ? Murky maybe, but polluted?
Not normally a drinking water supply anymore
It's a backup in case something goes wrong with the aqueducts that bring water from Quabbin and Wachusett reservoirs. It may have been tapped briefly during Aquapocalypse in 2010 -- Adam might know for sure.
It was tapped
during Aquapocalypse.
yup, it was
But if I remember correctly we were told not to use it for drinking or washing dishes. They were also worried that if the sediment was stirred up hard metals might get mixed in.
I don't know too much about this body of water so you might be right, but I was just going off how other bodies of water around Boston look. Lots of algae blooms, pretty bad visibility, and lots of junk in the sediment.
Not polluted
The Chestnut Hill Reservoir is not polluted, not even "semi-polluted." It's no longer an active part of the Boston water supply, but during that major water outage in May 2010 it was pressed into service again. Boston was on a "boil water" order in case the reservoir water wasn't up to snuff, but subsequent tests showed that the water had been safe after all.
Body removed
Police just pulled the body, already in a bag, up using a ladder. There's about 20 or so people on scene...
Family IDd him on scene
It's Garcia.
His cousins and immediate family ID'd him.
No details until they do an autopsy obviously, but at least that poor family can have some resolve.
How's this then....
Rest in peace, whoever it is.
Perfect
Just perfect.
The old fence around the reservoir
This is a terrible story, and I offer my condolences to his family, who now have some, but not total closure.
I hope that this turns out to be a tragic accident and does not involve foul play.
Even if this does turn out to be an accident (e.g., he fell in on the way back to the campus), however, it will likely raise questions about the removal of that fence that used to enclose most of the water. I know that most everyone loves the fact that it is gone and that you can now walk on top of the embankment, but I often thought about how difficult it would be to get out of the water if one fell in. I thought it would be particularly difficult because of the steepness of the embankment leading down to the water, and the fact that the rocks running along the perimeter always looked very slimy and slippery.
Unfortunately, I can envision a situation where this poor fellow could have fallen in, and not been able to get out on his own (and with no one in earshot at that hour to hear appeals for help) before hypothermia set in.
What a sad, sad terrible story.
No sign earlier this morning
I ran past that spot around 6:40 am this morning, an hour or so earlier than his body was reported, and I saw nothing. During my morning runs the last few weeks, I've been looking all around the reservoir for any sign of him. Poor guy.