Child Falls Off Boat at Montauk Marina, Nearly Drowns

A 2-year-old boy nearly drowned when he fell off a boat at the Montauk Lake Club and Marina on Wednesday morning, East Hampton Town police said. 

Captain Chris Anderson said Wednesday afternoon that there was limited information, but that the boy, Nathan Sarmiento of East Hampton, had vomited a large amount of water and began breathing on his own before police arrived, and was crying before he was airlifted to Stony Brook University Hospital. 

Police and emergency medical personnel were called to the marina at 11:13 a.m. Montauk Fire Chief Joe Lenahan was around the corner working when his department received the call about a child who had fallen into the water. He said he got to the marina within 45 seconds of the call. He ran to the pool, found no one, then ran out back to the large lawn overlooking the water and also found no one. "I stopped and listened and I heard a scream in the distance," he said. He ran to the end of the middle dock and found a bunch of people huddled around the boy. 

The boy was laying on his back, was blue, and had labored breathing, the chief said. An older man told him he had gotten the water out of the child, but the chief said he could tell the child was struggling to breathe and he could hear gurgling. The chief took the child in his arms, turned him onto his stomach, and, he said, "ran as fast as I could" down the dock to meet the police and ambulance crew as they arrived. The child threw up more water as he carried him. Once with an officer, he took the child's soaking wet clothes off — a brown shirt with a teddy bear on it and blue pants, he said --  and then the on-duty paramedic arrived. 

Chief Lenahan said he wasn't able to learn from the boy's mother, a Spanish-speaking woman, Irma Suarez, what exactly had happened. Someone on the dock said the boy had been in the water for 15 minutes, but that could not be verified. 

The paramedic reported to the chief that the child was alert as they loaded him onto a helicopter at East Hampton Airport to be taken to Stony Brook University Hospital

"Hopefully the good Lord is going to pull him through," Chief Lenahan said.