Cocoa, Fla. (WESH/CNN Newsource) – Cell phone video posted on social media shows a Florida man drowning in a retention pond while five teens stand by, recording and even mocking him and laughing.
No one called for help, and the man died.
Police call it “beyond heartless.”
31-year-old Jamel Dunn, his head barely visible, got into deeper and deeper water July 9th.
Five teenagers were recording it. Audio from the recording includes statements like, “We’re not gonna help your (expletive). Shouldn’t have got in. let him drown, what the heck.”
Police said they don’t know why Dunn went in to the water but when he did, there was a small group of teens were watching him from the bank down that way.
Yvonne Martinez with the Cocoa Police Department said, “Laughed at him, told him that they weren’t going to help him or rescue him, and taunted and laughed at him the entire time.”
“You gotta understand,” shouted the teens. “You shoulda never got in there!”
Dunn’s fiancée, Rondanielle Willams, said, “It broke my heart for someone to just sit there, of age, to know if someone needs help–they’re crying out for help in the video –and you just do nothing.”
Williams was there five days later when Dunn’s body was finally found. She said, “How could nothing in your heart tell you not to do anything when someone’s crying out for help and you’re telling them you’re not going to help them.”
The Florida State Attorney’s Office released a statement condemning the video, but saying prosecutors could find no law that had been violated.
The five teens who made and posted the video have been identified and interviewed, but there is no formal punishment.
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