Fall-out continues from Dylan’s diving death

An apparently delayed response to a diving emergency; buddying-up of two 12-year-old trainees in poor visibility; a divemaster’s lost computer and mixed messages on whether the case was open or closed – more information is emerging about the circumstances surrounding the death of 12-year-old Dylan Harrison during a certification dive in a Texas lake two months ago.

The fatal incident and its aftermath were reported on Divernet on 16 October.

Fox News, which broke the story, has spoken to the scuba instructor-trainer it says organised an impromptu search and recovery operation for the girl while the dive professional who had led the fatal dive – instructor William Armstrong, who is also a serving deputy sheriff – remained apparently frozen in the moment.

International Scuba dive-school owner Richard Thomas from Carrollton had been training instructors at the Scuba Ranch lake site in Terrell on the morning of 16 August when, informed that a young diver had gone missing, he told his kitted-up instructors to start searching while he went to a nearby dive-centre to find out more.

“When I arrived, no one was doing anything,” he told Fox. “They were all standing shell-shocked. I asked: ‘Who is the instructor here? Is there a professional here?’” No one responded until Armstrong’s wife eventually pointed out her husband who, according to Thomas, must have been out of the water for some time because he was “bone-dry”.

Thomas asked Armstrong for information to assist with the search. “He started telling me: ‘I didn’t do anything wrong’. It was very difficult to get information out of him.”

Seven-minute search

Thomas says that one of his divers managed to locate Dylan at a depth of about 13m within only seven minutes of starting the search. “Seven minutes is the time people are able to be brought back from a drowning, potentially,” commented Thomas, suggesting that a more immediate response might have changed the outcome.

Thomas accompanied the Harrison family to hospital but said that when he had tried to share his concerns about the incident with the local Kaufman County sheriff’s office, he was told that the investigation was closed. 

Ross Neil, an instructor-trainer, commented that although Dylan being part of a group of eight students with two dive professionals met official certification standards – which allow up to 10 trainees – Dylan had been diving in poor visibility rather than blue water, which needed to be taken into account. 

She had also been buddied with another 12-year-old on the dive, though her parents had reportedly understood that she would be paired up with a divemaster. The certification dive had been organised by dive-store ScubaToys.com.

Open or closed?

William Armstrong, who works in a sheriff’s office in another county, divemaster Jonathan Roussel, Dylan Harrison and another unnamed student were all said to have been wearing dive-computers when the incident occurred.

Divernet has learnt that at the end of September well-known US dive-fatality lawyer David Concannon contacted Kaufman County sheriff’s office as the Harrison family’s legal representative to inquire about data downloads from these computers.

Concerned divers had been sending Concannon unsolicited copies of the sheriff’s office “call for service” outline report on the fatal incident – availability of which to the public seemed to indicate that its official status was “Closed by Other Means”. 

The lawyer wanted to know why the investigation had been closed if the dive-computer data had yet to be analysed and, if it was closed, when Dylan’s computer would be returned to the Harrisons.

Sheriff Bryan Beavers told Concannon that the girl’s death remained part of an open criminal investigation, with officers following “all available evidence” in co-ordination with the district attorney’s office, which was why details could not be disclosed.

An inspector from the criminal investigations division followed up to explain that although the case had previously been “shown to be closed” it was still being investigated pending data and full medical documentation. Dylan’s dive-computer was to be downloaded by the Dallas Police Department Dive Team, because the county lacked the necessary resources. 

However, he added that after being in contact with Armstrong and Roussel “no data is to be recovered”. Aware that recovering data from dive-computers is standard practice in such cases Concannon questioned this, pointing out that the process was straightforward, with manufacturers willing to carry it out on behalf of investigators if requested.

It was highly unlikely that the data on both computers could have been corrupted, especially given the instructor’s standing as both a dive-professional and law officer. 

Divemaster’s lost computer

When interviewed by Concannon’s investigator, a former FBI Dive Team leader, divemaster Roussel said that he had tried but failed to download the data from his dive-computer – and had since lost it in a 27m-deep lake.

As Concannon pointed out to the sheriff’s office, Roussel’s professional liability insurer and certification agency would have requested that he submit his dive-profiles in a written report within 24 hours of any fatal incident. 

“In the 200+ underwater fatality investigations I have been involved with since downloadable dive-computers first came on the market, I have never seen a dive-computer with exculpatory evidence stored on it become lost,” commented Concannon.

“I have seen multiple instances where the dive-computers were stolen from bodies before the authorities arrived, not downloaded or the data was intentionally erased or corrupted, but never when the data would have corroborated someone’s account of what happened.”