UNION -- A 17-year-old man from Southbridge, Massachusetts was pronounced dead Sunday evening after he was taken from the waters of a lake at Bigelow Hollow State Park Sunday afternoon.
The call came into the Union Fire Department around 3:50 p.m. Sunday afternoon. Eliseo Santos was swimming with friends in Mashapaug Lake. He went under the water and did not come back up.
"The people that were swimming with him did a real good job of pinpointing the area where he went down," Union Fire Chief David Eaton said. "So when the divers went in, they found him and brought him up."
It took divers about 10 minutes to locate the male and pull him out of the water.
CPR was administered on site and Santos was then taken to Harrington Hospital in Southbridge where he was pronounced dead.
EnCon police are investigating the incident. The Tolland County Dive Team also responded, along with the Union Fire Department.
"The guy that was driving the boat was basically yelling at everybody who was swimming, everybody get out of the water, everybody get out of the water right now its an emergency," Kayaker Lorraine Latkofsky said.
The ponds at Bigelow Hollow State Park are not designated state park swim areas and do not have lifeguards at that location.
"You don’t really ever expect anything like that to happen but accidents do happen," Latkofsky said. "It's just something you have to really be cautious, just have to really be careful."
