Local & State Headlines

Teen’s death was likely accidental drowning

• The victim’s friend discovered his body and tried to pull him out of the pool, police reports show.

J.D. Sumner

ALBANY — Preliminary autopsy results indicate that a 17-year-old Florida boy accidentally drowned while swimming at a northwest Albany apartment complex Monday, investigators say.

Raheem Gillon, 17, of Crescent City, Fla., who was in town visiting family and friends, was found near the bottom of a pool at the Westwind Apartment complex Monday afternoon. Despite attempts by passers-by and rescue personnel to revive him, Gillon was pronounced dead at the scene.

Coroner Emma Quimbley said Tuesday that she’s confident after receiving Gillon’s preliminary autopsy report from the State Crime Lab in Atlanta that the teen, who family members say couldn’t swim, accidently drowned.

“We think he may have gotten out to the deep end and panicked and drowned,” Quimbley said. “There is nothing to suggest anything otherwise.”

A pool cleaner at the apartment complex told investigators that he saw a tall man clinging to the side of the pool less than an hour before Gillon’s body was found, but didn’t think anything of it.

According to police reports, Gillon’s friend Bernard Ash told police that around 4 p.m. Gillon told him that he was going to go swimming. Around 5:20 p.m., Ash said that he noticed Gillon hadn’t returned and that he went to go join him at the pool when he discovered Gillon’s body floating near the bottom of the deep end of the pool.

Ash said he pulled Gillon to the shallow end, managed to pull his friend from the pool and began yelling for help.

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