#UltimaHora reportan 2 persona ahogadas en el #BronxRiver. +6pm por Unimas @nildarosario pic.twitter.com/loBE4dpFnw
— Univision 41 (@noticias41ny) June 20, 2014
A 13-year-old boy drowned and his cousin was in critical condition Friday after they jumped in the Bronx River for a dip despite not being able to swim, cops and witnesses said.
Erickson Villa (on stretcher, and inset) was pulled from the water by FDNY divers after an hour and was pronounced dead at St. Barnabas Hospital.
Gavin Wellington, also 13, was rescued after 20 minutes and is in critical condition.
“The family is going crazy right now. They don’t even recognize that he’s dead yet,” said an emotional Maria Regalabo, cousin of both teens.
The cousins were part of a group hanging out at Starlight Park near East 172nd Street and Bronx River Avenue at around 3 p.m.
“Witnesses saw them jump in and swim out and then they lost sight of them,” said NYPD spokesman Stephen Davis.
The FDNY got the call at 3:09 p.m. and got Wellington out of the water at 3:30 p.m.
It took an hour to find Villa, who sources said was “unresponsive” when he was pulled out.
The area where the boys jumped into the water has a dock surrounded by shallow water, but the river quickly gets deeper.
“We were all playing basketball and like six of them went over to the river and said they wanted to go in the water,” said Diaminique Mims, 15, adding that neither cousin knew how to swim.
“They both jumped in the water; they didn’t come back up in five minutes,” said Mims. “I don’t know why they went in the water. They were all just messing around.”
She said a friend frantically rushed for help.
“Someone came running over and asked if any of us could swim,” said Mims. “We said, ‘No.’ Another kid, George, went in after them, but he can’t swim, either.”
Wellington is a student at IS 98, as was his cousin, cops said.
A witness said that when Wellington was rescued he had “foam all over his mouth.”
He was in critical condition in the pediatric intensive care unit at Montefiore Hospital late Friday night.
“[Erickson] didn’t speak that much but he was a nice kid,” said Dante Jacobs, 22, who lives across the hall from the Villa family.
“This is so unexpected . . . “He was a good kid.”
In 2010, two teens drowned after taking a dip in a dangerous Bronx swimming hole near River Park, about a mile north of Starlight Park.
Crystal Reyes, 15, and friend David Luccioni, 17, who dived in to save her, both drowned in the shallow, murky waters.
Additional reporting by Lia Eustachewich