Teen who nearly drowned in Brooklyn’s Prospect Park Lake dies after clinging to life for weeks
A 13-year-old boy who nearly drowned in Prospect Park Lake in Brooklyn last month has died after clinging to life for weeks, his family says.
Rikeverns “Ricky” Joassaint died Wednesday with his mother at his bedside after she flew to the city to be with him, according to relatives.
“He fought and held on until we were able to bring his mom from the Caribbean to come to his bedside,” family wrote on a GoFundMe page for the youth. “His mom was able to spend 1.5 days with him at the bedside, before Ricky became an Angel of God.”
He was one of five boys splashing in the water just off East Drive near the Peristyle in the southern end of the park around 7:30 p.m. on June 13 when he disappeared under the surf, according to witnesses.
It was the teen’s first time in the lake, relatives said.
“He went for a dive and things went wrong,” his grandfather Lifaite Joassaint previously told the Daily News. “He doesn’t know anything about swimming.”
The teen, a sixth grader at Walt Whitman Middle School, was taken to New York Presbyterian-Methodist Hospital and later transferred to a pediatric ICU unit at Cornell University Medical College in Manhattan, cops said.
“We are heartbroken,” family said this week. “We ask for your prayers to help us during this painful and tragic part of life.”
