Crime & Safety
Sisters on Shopping Cart Drowning: 'A Stupid Game'
The body of Chance Werner was pulled from Allatoona Lake Sunday morning in Bartow County. He had been tied to a shopping cart and pushed off a dock as part of a game.
The sisters of a Georgia teenager who drowned after he was tied to a shopping cart and plunged into a lake as part of a game question why nobody thought of the consequences to such a risky stunt.
According to WSBTV, Chance Werner, 18, was at Allatoona Lake playing a game in which "a person would sit in a shopping cart tied to a pole, then the cart was forcefully pushed off the dock, causing the person to "pop" out of the cart and the person would swim to the dock."
Werner, a Euharlee resident, was playing the game with two friends at Dock D of Holiday Harbor Marina in Bartow County, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported.
In this instance, the cart was not tied to a pole, but was instead tied to Werner, the station reported.
Werner’s sisters told FOX 5 TV in Atlanta that the game their brother was playing was a stupid mistake, and they question why nobody thought of the consequences of the stunt.
His sister Kara Doomy told FOX 5, “It was a stupid game, and it cost my brother his life.”
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“We’ve all been that age, we’ve all done stupid things. … The level of disregard,” Doomy added.
And another sister, Charlee Klein, told FOX 5, “Did not one person think that this was not a good game to play? It’s something that could have been prevented. I mean, nobody should have to go through that. He had so much plans. … he wanted to be there for that baby.”
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Werner had a seven-month-old child.
The teenager was pulled into the lake by the cart, and did not resurface. His body was pulled from the lake just before 3 a.m. Sunday by officials with the Georgia Department of Natural Resources with the help of the sheriff's office and Bartow County Fire and Rescue.Werner was discovered in about 30 feet of water with the cart still strapped to his body, WSB TV reported.
The Bartow County Sheriff's Office said Tuesday that it cannot confirm if Werner was drinking or not. Authorities are waiting for testing and lab results from his autopsy. At this point, Werner's death is considered an accidental death, the department said.
Georgia Department of Natural Resources spokeswoman Melissa Cummings told media outlets that Werner graduated from high school Saturday.
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