Weather | Sports | Forums | Comics | Classifieds | Calendar | Movies
DUANE BOURNEOf few new details to emerge are that cocaine in one diver's system did not play a role and that the two may have been involved in a previous diving accident.
BROOKSVILLE - Lost and disoriented by blinding silt, one diver tried unsuccessfully to navigate his way out of the "Mount Everest" of underwater caves. Meanwhile, his partner became entangled in guide lines. Both men drowned after their tanks emptied of oxygen, an investigation has found.
The report released Wednesday by the Hernando County Sheriff's Office provides few new details about the drowning deaths of John Robinson Jr., 36, of St. Petersburg and his Spring Hill diving partner, Craig Simon, 44. The report doesn't assign blame or answer the question of which diver first ran into difficulty that June day at Eagle's Nest.
"They probably were looking for each other and ran out of air," Paul Heinerth, a Hudson dive shop owner, who recovered the bodies, said on Wednesday.
"If John did not look so long, he could have made it out. And if Craig was not caught in the silt, maybe he could have made it out. There is no way of knowing."
On June 12, Simon, who ran a landscaping business, and Robinson, an electrical engineer, went diving in the underwater caves at Eagle's Nest in the Bayport area.
Simon, a Bronx native, had been scuba diving for 22 years but discovered cave diving 21/2 years before his death.
On that afternoon, when Simon's wife, Beth-Ann, didn't hear from him, she called him and left a cell phone message. By 7 p.m. that evening, she called the Sheriff's Office. An hour and a half later, authorities told her that the men had not resurfaced.
Robinson's body was recovered the following day in an area called John's Pocket. But it took expert divers two days to find Simon's body entangled in guideline and another day to recover it.
After a three-month investigation, which included the examination of sophisticated diving computers used by the victims, investigators ruled the drowning was an accident, although toxicology tests performed on Simon showed evidence of cocaine use.
The 12-page report does not indicate how much cocaine was in Simon's system.
Sheriff's spokeswoman Deputy Donna Black said on Wednesday that drugs did not play a role in Simon's death, categorizing the incident as an accident.
According to the report, Beth-Ann Simon warned her husband not to dive with Robinson because the two were involved in a previous accident in which Craig Simon had to assist a panicky Robinson to the surface.
Craig Simon promised his wife he would not go out with Robinson again because he took risks, the report said, but he apparently changed his mind a week before their dive when Robinson told him that everyone else refused to dive with him.
Witnesses, who saw the men before they embarked on their fatal dive, told authorities they overheard Robinson and Simon discussing their plans and believed they used a mixture of chemicals that would allow 21/2 hours worth of air.
On the first full day of the search, divers found Robinson about 1,300 feet inside a cave. His equipment was operational, but both tanks were out of oxygen.
Larry Green of Fort White-based International Training Inc. inspected Robinson's computer and determined that he could have gotten confused by the silt kicked up from the cave floor and could not manage to find the exit. Robinson's body was found heading out, the report stated.
The next day, Heinerth and another diver found Simon's diving scooter buried in the cave's floor near a closet-sized room known as John's Pass.
Heinerth speculated on Wednesday that something may have happened to distort their visibility, causing both men to veer off their guideline and into an uncharted tunnel.
"When they lost sight of everything and anything, John went one way and found his way to cleaner water, but it took too much time," Heinerth said. "Meanwhile, on the other side of the room, Craig was also in the silt and found himself tangled. We'll never know for sure, but something convinced them to go off the line and go into that room."
Neither Simon's widow, Beth-Ann, nor Robinson's father, John Robinson Sr., could be reached for comment about the report.
Duane Bourne can be reached at 352 754-6114 or dbourne@sptimes.com