A 26-year-old Belgian named Defawe Louis was killed on Friday off the coast of El Cortecito beach in the East Coast province of La Altagracia while attempting a free dive. Two other divers, Bogdan Septimiu of Rumania and Pascal Balywf of Belgium, remain missing.
El Caribe newspaper reports that the three were members of a diving school and that Louis had attempted to reach a depth of 365 feet (100 meters), as per the testimony of one of the survivors. Jonathan Morla, a 23-year-old Dominican who accompanied the expedition, said that the greatest depth he reached was of 60 or 55 meters and that another of the group had reached 75 meters.
To save Morla’s life and that of Belgian Burt Kelin, 31, the staff of the Hospiten in Bavaro transferred them to the Instituto de Maternidad San Rafael in Santo Domingo, where they underwent a 10-hour decompression treatment in hyperbaric chambers of the Centro de Medicina Hiperbarica.
This is the second free diving tragedy to occur in the DR. The first was reported in October 2002, when Audrey Mestre died attempting to dive to 171 meters.