Two city lifeguards were pulled off duty yesterday, one day after failing to notice two men floating face down in a Staten Island pool, officials said.
They “are not back [at] work,” Parks Department spokeswoman Vickie Karp said of the lifeguards, who were not identified.
Military hopefuls Bohdan Vitenko and Jonathan Proce, both 21, were pulled from the shallow end of Lyons Pool, in Tompkinsville, in cardiac arrest Wednesday morning. Vitenko died.
Proce, himself a city lifeguard cleared to try out for the elite Air Force Battlefield Airmen later this year, remained in critical condition last night at Richmond University Medical Center.
About 20 other swimmers were in the pool. Vitenko and Proce, there with two friends, may have been engaged in breath-holding exercises when they lost consciousness.
“Investigations by the [NYPD] and Department of Health are ongoing,” Karp said. “We cannot speculate on the outcome.”
The Staten Island District Attorney’s Office said there was no evidence of criminality.