By 9:30 AM John Farrar, a scuba diver with the Edgartown Rescue Squad had arrived. Accoding to the police report, Mr. Farrar found the rear passenger window broken out. Sticking his head inside, he saw the body of a young woman. Her face was tilted upward, pressed into the footwell of the upside-down car. Her hands gripped the backseat, holding her in that position. Farrar reported that the woman's body still floated at the top of the car as he pulled her out, suggesting to him that she still had some air in her body. He felt that, in his experience, if there had been no air, the body would have sunk. As soon as he touched the woman, Farrar knew she was dead. Rigor mortis had already set in. By ten o'clock that morning, the body was out of the car and on dry land. (Kennedy had YET to report the accident.)
"Her head was in the floorboards where the last bit of air would have been," Mr. Farrar reported. "It appears to me that she was holding herself up in that air to get the last bit of air. She would have been very conscious after the crash to get in that position to breathe the last pocket of air. There was no air pocket in the car when I arrived, but she could have been alive a good while after the car went off the bridge. If I had been called immediately after the accident, I think there's a good chance the girl could have been saved."
"Cause of Death" by Cyril Wecht, M.D., J.D. |
