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National Guardsman is Florida’s 28th
boating fatality
May 4, 2007
Contact: Stan Kirkland (850) 624-7000
A 20-year-old U.S. Army National Guardsman from
Mobile, Ala. drowned Thursday after falling off a kayak in the
Gulf of Mexico in Destin.
The victim, Joshua Terrell Cooper, and fellow
Guardsman Morris Rogers were on the 13-foot kayak in chest-deep
water when a wave flipped them, according to Investigator Eddie
Gatlin with the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation
Commission. Rogers told investigators Cooper began struggling
and he tried to save him, but other waves pushed them into
deeper water. Rogers, himself, had to be rescued.
The kayak flipped about 11:30 a.m. in the surf
about 200 yards west of the Back Porch restaurant. Neither man
wore a life jacket.
Cooper and Rogers were assigned to a National
Guard unit in Dothan, Ala. Their unit is reportedly scheduled to
be deployed to Iraq in the coming weeks.
Cooper’s death is the 28th confirmed boating
fatality in Florida since Jan. 1. |
