March 11, 2001

PRESS RELEASE

To: Newsroom

For Immediate Release

Contact: Brian A. Crawford, Public Information Officer

Phone: 673-6652, cell: 455-2609, page: 675-2137

Car Plunges Into Cross Lake - Two Dead

Shreveport firefighters along with Caddo Fire District 2 personnel and Caddo Parish Sheriff’s officers were called out to North Lakeshore Drive shortly after 2:00 a.m. this morning for the report of a car jetting off the road and into Cross Lake. When emergency crews arrived, divers from Shreveport Fire and Caddo Parish Sheriff’s Departments were sent into the water near a bridge in the 6100 block of North Lakeshore Drive. Finding the car twenty feet from the downward embanked shoreline, divers recovered the bodies of an unidentified black male and female. The pair were found close to but outside of the vehicle in ten feet of water. Both are estimated to be in their mid-twenties. They were rushed to Willis Knighton Medical Center on Greenwood Road by Shreveport paramedics and Balentine Ambulance, where they were pronounced dead a short time later.

The car reportedly lost control in a curve just south of the bridge and drove off of the road and into the lake. Kenneth Taylor, 45, of Shreveport, said that he was fishing at the bridge when he first heard the sound of screeching tires. Taylor said he looked up in time to see the vehicle, traveling at a fast rate, sideways in the road. The car then straightened out but veered off onto the eastbound shoulder, just before the bridge, and then into the water, said Taylor.

The man and woman escaped from the vehicle and were on the back of the car as it began to submerge. The woman reportedly was screaming that she could not swim and the man went to aid her. Taylor went to a nearby house where 911 was called. When he returned to the scene, the two occupants and the car were no longer visible.

Shreveport Fire Department diver Captain Kerry Foster pulled both bodies out of the water just before 3:00 a.m. Both were pulseless and breathless when paramedics began to work to revive them. The victim’s conditions were considered a cold water drowning, where patients submerged in cold water for long periods of time are potentially resuscitateable. Divers estimated the temperature of the water at 55 degrees. Caddo Parish Sheriff’s officials were still on the scene trying to piece together the series of events that may have led to the accident. The vehicle was pulled from the lake with its description being withheld until a positive identification of the victims can be made. There was some initial concern by divers that a child may have also been aboard the vehicle as a child seat was found in the vehicle on the search. No other persons were found. ###