Bronx woman, 59, dies after 70-FT TREE fell into pool and crushed her in a freak accident
RIVERDALE, THE BRONX: A summer day by the pool turned deadly for a 50-year-old woman in the Spuyten Duyvil section of the Bronx on Monday, August 15, after she was fatally struck by a tree that fell into the water. According to the authorities, 59-year-old Donna Douglas lived at the River Terrace Apartments on Palisades Avenue in the Riverdale section, where the tree fell into the private pool just after 1.30 pm, The Mercury News reported. Douglas was pronounced dead at the scene after suffering a major body trauma.
Douglas had been swimming with a 72-year-old neighbor, who was struck by a tree branch but survived. She was taken to Allen Pavillion Hospital in critical but stable condition. Mike Gallo, 62, saw the accident from his third-floor apartment and said his wife rode with the surviving victim to the hospital. “She swims with redacted every day, every other day at the same time. They just take laps and they would, they swim right next to each other. So, the fact that one made it and one didn’t was … very, very freakish,” the neighbor said to New York Post.
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“She was dead instantly,” building Gallo added. “There was no, even if EMS was here on the spot, they couldn’t resuscitate her. She got hit in the head pretty hard.” According to CBSNews, the massive tree fell from the adjoining property, crashed through a fence, and into the River Terrace pool, crushing Douglas, a Maryland native who worked as a client account coordinator at the elite law firm Davis Polk. "Casts a pall over the building, and I really don't want to talk about it, actually," resident Sandra Roberts said.
“Everybody was screaming, ‘Help! Help!’ My windows were open, so I heard everything immediately. I looked down and I saw the tree in the swimming pool. I knew there was three or four people in it,” said Miriam Allen, who lives on the third floor. Allen said the trees on the building’s property have been ravaged by Asian Horned Beetles and when she called 311 to complain about them, she claimed nothing was done. The city Parks Department confirmed the tree was not on public property and was the building owner's responsibility.
“A loss of life like that, it’s just unimaginable,” resident Sebastian Bliffeld said. “It’s unimaginable.” The building superintendent jumped into the water, fully clothed, after his daughter who was working as the lifeguard alerted him and called 911. “Her body was under the branches, so I pull her out,” the super, Alex Syku, said. “And when I pull her out, I saw her, she was no…she was dead.” Gallo also provided an update on the condition of the 72-year-old woman. He said "She's OK now, but she has a scar under her eye and a lump on her head. It's a very traumatic experience. They were swimming maybe two feet apart from each other. At the end of the day, someone's going home and someone's not."
An autopsy will be conducted to determine the exact cause of the death. Steven Douglas said his sister loved life in New York City, loved to travel and loved a man named Gabe Gonzalez, her partner of many years. The incident happened two days after a falling tree killed a man while he was sitting on a bench in Brooklyn.