GREENVILLE, N.C. – The DH Conley community in Greenville is mourning the death of a 17-year-old student and football player.
Over the weekend, Devantae Dortch died after jumping into the Tar River on Saturday. Devantae was the third student athlete in North Carolina to drown in the last week.
On Memorial Day, 18-year-old Justice Clark, a senior football player at Harnett Central High School in Angier, drowned while swimming with friends at a Lillington pond.w
On Tuesday, 17-year-old Marcos Hernandez, a junior rugby player at North Mecklenburg High School in Huntersville, drowned while swimming with friends in Mountain Island Lake near Charlotte.
To help students cope with the loss of Devantae Dortch, his school will have its crisis team available.
Witnesses say Dortch jumped off a cliff into the water and never resurfaced.
Crews spent several hours searching the river off of Highway 33 before finding the Conley junior’s body around 4:30 p.m.
A man who lives nearby says while the river can be fun for kids, it is also dangerous.
“They either dive off the cliff or they swing out on a rope and drop into the water,” explained Dennis Andres, lives near the river. “There is a great deal of debris at the bottom of the river here. They don’t always recognize how dangerous it can be.”
Dortch’s former co-workers say he was hearing impaired although emergency crews have not said whether that played a factor in is drowning.