Student drowns in Martha Lake

  • Oscar Halpert<br>
  • Monday, March 3, 2008 11:53am

Art Clemente and his wife, Margie, were spending a quiet Tuesday night around 9:20 p.m. at their East Shore Drive home along Martha Lake Jan. 11.

“We were just sittin’ here chattin,’ said Clemente, 81.

Suddenly, they heard noise.

“We started hearing hollering,” he said. “They were hollering, ‘call 911.’”

Upstairs, renters Jules Butler 35, a law student, and his wife, Samantha, 35, also heard the yelling coming from outside.

“We actually thought it was a domestic (dispute), maybe across the lake,” Jules Butler said. “She said ‘call 911.’”

“I grabbed the phone and went outside and that’s when I realized someone had fallen in the lake,” he said.

What they didn’t know – but would soon find out – was that two teenage boys had fallen through the lake’s thin ice and into the frigid water.

One of the boys, 15-year old Seth James, a Mountlake Terrace High School sophomore, was later pronounced dead on arrival at Providence Medical Center in Everett. The Snohomish County Medical Examiner said his death was accidental. Greg Schwab, Mountlake Terrace High School principal, notified students and parents of James’ death in a Jan. 17 letter. He said Edmonds School District counselors and psychologists were available to grieving students.

A Snohomish County Sheriff’s Office diver had found James after crews searched the lake for about two hours. Rescuers used oars and sharp poles to break through ice, which they said was up to an inch thick in places, according to spokeswoman Rebecca Hover. A 15-year-old boy from Bothell had walked out of the lake on his own before Snohomish County Fire District 1 firefighters arrived. That boy was not identified at The Enterprise deadline.

The incident drew a massive emergency response. Crews from fire districts 1 and 7 as well as the Edmonds Fire Department were involved, as were dive teams from Snohomish, King and Pierce County sheriff’s offices, Snohomish County Search and Rescue, and the county’s technical rescue team.

A diver from the Snohomish County Sheriff’s Office dive team found James after crews searched the lake for approximately two hours.

“It was very dark, and the cold (water and air) temperatures and the ice made it difficult for rescuers,” Hover said.

All Butler knew on Tuesday night, he said, was that he had to get into the Clemente’s fiberglass canoe and steer it through the ice to save a life. He was wearing a T-shirt, slacks and rubber boots.

“Initially, after I got going, it was OK, then I hit a slog,” he said. “As I proceeded, it became incrementally difficult.”

Samantha Butler had received some Emergency Medical Technician training in California. She stood on the shore, gazing into the chilly dark night, and reassured whoever was in the water.

“I was saying ‘help is on the way now,’ and ‘keep your elbows in,’” she said.

Within minutes, Jules Butler found one of the boys, 15-year-old Keith Dunn, a sophomore at Lynnwood High School, who swam toward the canoe.

“I got close to the ice break,” Jules Butler said.

As he helped the boy into the canoe, a thought crossed his mind.

“There was a big issue of whether he was going to tip me over,” Butler said. “He was very responsive to direction.”

Back at shore, the Butlers and Clementes helped Dunn to the house where they quickly got his wet clothes off, dried him and covered him with a blanket.

“We put a hair dryer on the blanket to try to get the boy’s body heat up,” said Art Clemente, a former Legislative District 39 state representative who referred to himself as a “hard-boiled ex-Marine.”

At the hospital on Wednesday, Dunn said he’d been walking with his friend James about 50 yards from shore when the ice broke.

“I tried pulling my buddy, Seth, out of the water,” Dunn said. “When I tried pulling him out I fell in.”

He pulled himself out and started yelling for help. He estimates he spent about five minutes underwater trying to save his friend.

“I just couldn’t find him,” he said.

Dunn was released Wednesday from Providence. His body was swollen and cut from his encounter with the cold and ice.

Dunn said neither boy thought about the dangers of walking out on the ice.

“We just saw the ice and decided, ‘Lets go walk on it ,’” he said.

Inside the Clemente’s house on Tuesday night, Dunn was responsive.

“He could follow instructions,” Clemente said. “And he was very determined that he was going to live. He had a powerful will to live.”

Dunn also left one of his boots on the ice, so rescuers could find the spot where the boys had been.

“He had good presence of mind,” Art Clemente said.

Butler said he didn’t notice any emotions during the rescue.

“I didn’t think I was feeling anything,” he said. “There’s something about the moment. You just deal with what’s in front of you.”

On Wednesday, he said, sadness overtook him. “I’ve been sad all morning,” he said.

“It was like a bad dream,” Samantha Butler said. “I saw Jules in the canoe and with every stroke, he had to break the ice. It was like watching a nightmare unfold where you’re running in slow motion.”

Erik Stevick, a reporter with the Herald of Everett, contributed to this story.

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