By Christine Legere
Cape Cod Times
SOUTH YARMOUTH, Mass. — Guests at the Riverview Resort assumed William Butler was a mannequin when they spotted his lifeless body under several feet of water in the indoor pool Sunday.
“There was a brand new woman working at the hotel desk,” Cape and Islands District Attorney Michael O’Keefe said Tuesday. "(Butler) was described to her by other people as a mannequin or dummy lying at the bottom of the pool.”
The first two officers on the scene, after the emergency was reported about 11:45 a.m., “found bystanders around the pool staring at the victim who was still underwater, lying on the pool bottom,” according to the police report.
Authorities have said they are unsure how long the 68-year-old guest from Springfield Gardens, New York, had been submerged.
Rich Muller, spokesman for Riverview Resorts International, stood by the resort’s employees. “Staff responded immediately when they were notified he was in the pool and was unresponsive,” Muller said.
O’Keefe said the officers were “close by” and were on the scene shortly after the emergency call. They pulled Butler out of the pool and began CPR, but he could not be resuscitated.
“The medical examiner is still waiting for information to determine whether he’ll characterize cause of death as drowning or some medical issue,” O’Keefe said. The circumstances of the death are not suspicious, the district attorney added.
The Yarmouth Board of Health has scheduled a public hearing with representatives of the Riverview Resorts on Nov. 17 to discuss management’s failure to maintain the state-mandated schedule of water testing at its indoor swimming pool. Yarmouth Health Director Bruce Murphy stressed that failure had no causal connection to Butler’s death.
“When I went out there Sunday, the water was clear and the safety equipment was available,” Murphy said. “The person on the desk had CPR and water safety training.”
While lifeguards are not required, Yarmouth’s health regulations, written in 1982, specify hotels with pools must have someone certified with CPR, first aid and water safety “on the premises” whenever the pool is open.
An inspection of the pool records at the Riverview Sunday did reveal one violation of state law. “We noticed that a couple days they hadn’t done their required water testing four times per day,” Murphy said.
The pool remains closed as management of the time-share operation awaits an inspection by the state Department of Public Health.
Muller said the company has not been yet been notified of the state’s inspection date.
“We’re unsure when the pool will reopen,” Muller said.
Spokeswoman Anne Roache said state health officials plan to inspect the pool before the end of the week.
Yarmouth had another indoor pool drowning in late August, when 9- and 12-year-old sisters were found unconscious at the bottom of a pool at the Bayside Resort. They were dragged out by guests who conducted CPR until the town’s emergency workers arrived. The girls were taken to Children’s Hospital in Boston where the younger sister was taken off life-support systems and died. The older sister has recovered.
The infraction at Riverview is different from Bayside, Murphy said. None of the staff working at Bayside on the day of the drowning had current certificates in CPR, first aid and water safety.
The Board of Health voted to take no action against Bayside, following a hearing in early September, when the owner said 17 employees had been safety-certified since the drowning.
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©2014 the Cape Cod Times (Hyannis, Mass.)