Dylan’s dive instructor had worked previous 24 hours

In the latest twist to a grim story that has gripped the diving community, it has emerged that William Armstrong, the instructor supervising the morning dive on which 12-year-old girl Dylan Harrison died in August, had been working solidly through the previous day and night.

Armstrong was a part-time diving instructor, his day-job being as Assistant Chief Deputy for Collin County Sheriff’s Office in the town of McKinney, Texas. He resigned from that post on 21 October amid continuing fall-out from the fatal incident and apparent lack of progress with the official investigation.

The sheriff’s office has now confirmed to Fox News that after working at his day job all through Friday, 15 August, Armstrong had gone off-duty to work a 9pm-6am night-shift as a private security guard at Fisher Investments, wealth-management company premises in the town of Plano. 

He finished there only two hours before he was due to take the open-water certification class at the Scuba Ranch inland site in Terrell, a one-hour drive from Plano.

Along with Armstrong’s alleged decision to surface from the fatal dive before all the divers were accounted for, such lack of rest would count as a significant breach of scuba safety protocol.

The fatal dive

The NAUI entry-level certification dive had been organised by dive-store ScubaToys.com, a family business that has faced recent controversy after an old video clip surfaced showing owner Joe Johnson referring to the number of trainee deaths the business could survive without consequences.

NAUI, which had dismissed the clip as “not actionable” at the time, recently broke its silence on Dylan Harrison’s death to confirm that both Armstrong and the dive master accompanying him on the dive, Jonathan Roussel, were “NAUI sanctioned leaders”.

The two dive professionals entered the lake with eight trainees, including Dylan buddied up with another 12-year-old. Following an aborted descent to a 5m platform in poor visibility the group resurfaced, but according to at least one of the trainees the second descent was unco-ordinated, and it was after this that Dylan went missing. 

Her absence was not noticed until a later headcount, and no immediate search appears to be have been launched. Instructors on a nearby training session launched their own search after their trainer learnt that a diver was missing, and Dylan’s body was found at a depth of 13m within seven minutes.

It is not clear how long the search was delayed but Armstrong was later described as being found “bone-dry” on land, having left the water some time earlier and telling the instructor-trainer that he had done nothing wrong.

Case closed fast

David Concannon, the lawyer representing Dylan’s family, says that it took only 97 minutes from the time the girl was declared dead before the local Kaufman County Sheriff’s Office called her parents to say that it was closing the investigation. 

The sheriffs later backtracked on this decision and the investigation has since been continuing, though from recently with the assistance of federal law-enforcement agency the Texas Rangers. However there is still no word on the results of what should have been routine analysis of the dive-computers used on the dive by Amstrong, Roussel and Dylan.

Roussel has claimed that he lost his computer in a deep lake following the incident. However, both dive professionals would have been expected to submit their dive-profiles to their professional liability insurer and NAUI in a written report within 24 hours of the incident. Dylan’s computer has not been returned to the Harrison family.

The Scuba Ranch says it permanently suspended Armstrong from teaching at the facility immediately after the incident, with ScubaToys also suspended pending the results of the official investigation.