A 66-year-old man is in hospital and listed in critical condition after falling into Okanagan Lake in front of the Kelowna Yacht Club sometime after noon today.
Emergency crews on scene say the individual, identified by yacht club vice commodore and moorage director Mike Terris as a member of the club, was found in the lake without a pulse at 12:30 p.m.
“At this point, EHS and advanced life support has been working on the male (and) he’s being transported to KGH for medical evaluation,” said Cpl. Bill Parmar, Kelowna RCMP, noting the efforts had secured a pulse on the victim by the time the ambulance left for the hospital.
The body was found behind slip C40 by a dock hand who was cleaning out millweed in the area. The dock hand made the call to 9-1-1 and the body was pulled from the lake by ambulance and police personnel.
Police are trying to determine what happened as there was no one else found near the victim, no one to say how long he was in the water.
“There’s some indications that it could be as much as a half hour,” Parmar said.
RCMP investigators are talking to staff as well as people moored on the water, to get a timeline of the events and see if there are witnesses who can help determine what happened.
This summer has proven one of the more deadly summers in B.C. in terms of the number of people who have drowned. In addition to the death of a father who jumped into Wood Lake to save his two boys, the Okanagan has already seen another man die in a snorkelling incident in Peachland.
Finally, a man drowned in Mill Creek; the coroner has not determined the circumstances surrounding that death.
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