Monday, September 25, 2000
Teen friends drown in culvert
Storm runoff trapped boys under water
By Ben L. Kaufman
The Cincinnati Enquirer
No one knows which boy was swept away by surging rain Saturday night, but his lifelong buddy apparently tried to save him. Instead, Glen Este 13-year-olds Lincoln Schlueter and David Chance Carr drowned as rushing water trapped them in a 14-inch culvert at Clermont County's Park 50 TechneCenter.
Jim Baumann mourns the death of his nephew, who drowned in the culvert at right.
(Jeff Swinger photo)
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“When they found the boys, they were clinging to each other,” said Chance's mother, Jan Carr, of Bridlewood Lane. “One wasn't going to go down without the other one helping. ... We get some small comfort out of that.”
Chance
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Lincoln
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At one point, the boys were under 15 feet of water in the flood-control basin, according to Jim Whitworth, chief of the Miami Township fire and emergency medical service.
Lincoln's mother, Barbara Schlueter, a Cincinnati Enquirer newspaper carrier, brought the boys with her to Park 50 TechnePark where she prepared Sunday papers before delivering them.
It was a familiar routine and the youngsters, eighth-graders at Glen Este Middle School, loved using their inline skates on nearly deserted parking lots. Ms. Schlueter called police when they didn't return by 8 p.m.
Their bodies were recovered about 3:30 a.m. Sunday after a search involving 90 people.
No one knows what drew the teens to a grassy flood-control basin between Whitney Road and a parking lot.
Normally a dry depression criss-crossed by concrete swales, the basin fills during heavy rains and drains slowly through the culvert into the East Fork of the Little Miami River.
Saturday, a man who saw the boys said one ventured onto the basin's steep, grassy slope.
When he saw rescue units arriving, he told authorities what he had seen. By then, the water was so deep nothing was visible.
Another driver delivered Ms. Schlueter's newspapers while friends and co-workers tried to comfort the two families. Chance's father, David Carr, waited at home; disabled, he is awaiting a kidney transplant.
“I had to come and tell David the worst had happened,” Jan Carr said.
Searchers' efforts were futile and Chief Whitworth was ready to call it quits when search dogs hit on the culvert. By then, most of the runoff had drained and the boys were found under two feet of water.
There is no fence around the basin and no grate over the mouth of the culvert.
“There were no warning signs,” said Tom Woodward, who is engaged to Lincoln's mother. “There was no way that anyone looking at it would know that it was ... that dangerous.”
Friends and relatives said the boys were lively, bright teens who treasured each other's friendship.
Chance got his name because “He was our one in a million chance,” his mother explained. After almost five years of marriage, the Carrs had turned to fertility specialists without luck. Then she became pregnant “in God's own way.”
Sunday, the Carrs refused to blame Ms. Schlueter for letting the boys skate in the rain.
“We really couldn't look at each other without crying,” Jan Carr said. “I felt so bad for them.”
She was glad that Chance was with his friend. “My son went out having a blast, living life to the fullest.”
Outside the Schlueter home on a Glen Willow Drive, a flag had been lowered to half-staff.
Lincoln's mother and two older brothers were not available for comment, but Mr. Woodward talked affectionately about the youth's talents as a trumpeter, baseball player, angler and most recently, as a go-kart driver.
Annie-Laurie Blair contributed to this report.
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