La Salle: Student died not by drowning

LA SALLE Green Hills president Br. Victor Francisco: “(There was) no struggle that would be consistent with a drowning person.” Inquirer photo

Contrary to his parents’ claim in a lawsuit filed in a Manila court, the La Salle high school student who passed away last year died of “causes other than drowning.”

This was the clarification made in a letter sent recently to the INQUIRER by the president of La Salle Green Hills (LSGH) in reaction to the case filed by Ramon and Angela Galang against the school and one of its teachers.

In a case filed earlier this month, the couple asked the Manila Regional Trial Court to order the school to pay them P1.127 million in damages for the death of their son, Simon Ivan Galang, in October 2012.

Simon, a freshman at LSGH, passed away on his 14th day of confinement at Cardinal Santos Medical Center where he was taken after he allegedly drowned in a pool on the Mandaluyong campus on Oct. 11 during a swimming drill, based on court records.

According to the Galangs, only Simon’s classmates came to his aid at that time as his physical education teacher, Julius Abesamis, and the duty lifeguard, were nowhere to be found.

The couple added that it was only when Simon’s classmates finally managed to pull him out of the water that Abesamis and the lifeguard appeared. After trying but failing to revive the boy, they rushed him to the hospital.

LSGH president Br. Victor A. Franco said in his letter that while the school was not at liberty to discuss the medical condition of the younger Galang at the time of his death without his parents’ consent, “it may be evident that [his] death was not due to drowning.”

Franco added that this was the finding of the school investigation panel and the hospital doctors who attended to Simon.

He also pointed out that it was unlikely for the boy who stood at 5’6” to drown in the portion of the pool which was “only four feet” deep.

“He simply needed to stand up and his head would be high above the water level,” Franco said.

He told the INQUIRER that witnesses to the incident had said that there was “no struggle that would be consistent with a drowning person.”

What happened was that Simon “simply stopped swimming with his head resting on the kickboard several seconds after he left the pool gutter to begin the flutter-kick exercise.”

Franco also denied the Galangs’ claim that Abesamis did not act with diligence at the time of the incident.

Based on the accounts of witnesses and the footage taken by a closed circuit television camera, Abesamis was “closely supervising the students” during the swimming drill, he said.

He added that when Simon began the exercise, the P.E. teacher was standing at the pool gutter and observing him and two other students.

“There were also two lifeguards who were strategically positioned around the pool to observe and safeguard the students in the water,” Franco said.

According to the LSGH president, when Simon “stopped in the water and was resting his head on the flotation device he was holding,” Abesamis approached the boy to check on him even as two students pulled him to the side of the pool “where he was eventually lifted out.”

He added that in just a couple of minutes, trained medics and the school doctor were on hand to help Simon.

“The school’s CCTV cameras recorded that it took just over [six] minutes from the time that  he was lifted out of the water to the time that the ambulance carrying him” left the campus to take him to the hospital, Franco said in his letter.

He further said that contrary to the Galangs’ claim that the school helped them pay for only a portion of the hospital expenses, the school “advanced all amounts necessary to settle the hospital bills” which reached P1,859,304.78.

He added the school also shouldered “most if not all” of the cost of Simon’s wake and funeral contrary to what his parents said in their court petition.

The wake, Franco added, was held at the school chapel and LSGH representatives accompanied the boy’s family “throughout their ordeal.”

“The only thing that the school did not accommodate was their demand to be compensated in the amount of P14,000,000,” he said.