No Lifeguard on Duty

My squadmates responded to a child drowning at a downtown hotel and so did the media. When they arrived, they saw two men in a heated argument in the pool area. They quickly established there were no children involved.

Instead, they learned a guy jumped in the pool and started acting like he was drowning. He had been drinking and thought it would be funny to joke around with his friends. Unfortunately, another guy had been drinking even more than the first guy and actually thought he was drowning. Acting the hero, he jumped in to save the man in distress. He was trying to pull the 'victim' to the side of the pool while the guy fought him off. The more the victim fought, the more the hero thought he was struggling to stay above water. Once safely ashore, a verbal argument erupted. The hero was a self-proclaimed homosexual (not that the skin tight florescent yellow Speedo didn't give him away). The prankster was unhappy about being man-handled by the big and flamboyant hero (he was about 6'3" and 250 lbs).

When the hotel security guard tried to separate the men, Mr. hero punched him in the face. He was awarded with a pair of shiny silver bracelets and an escort into the backseat of a patrol car. Apparently, he was very upset about the whole rescue-gone-bad incident and became enraged. He somehow slipped out of one handcuff and began punching and kicking the interior of the police car. Now, several officers had to remove him from the car, reattach the cuffs and get him to the police station. Unfortunately, he came out fighting. It took several officers to get him under control.

Because the call was originally broadcast as a child drowning, the local media was there with cameras running. I got to see my squadmates get tossed around by a guy in a Speedo who was yelling, "I'm HIV....I'm HIV...." I don't know if he was actually HIV positive or not but there was a lot of exposure to blood so I'm hoping he's not. My embarassed colleagues had to repeatedly watched themselves on TV as the news stations kept rerunning the story.