Story Archive

He’s Swimming in It

Niall Pawsey, 20, won a bet with his friends that he could quit drinking for a month. He celebrated his victory with a drinking spree. His friend Daniel Bellow explained that after being kicked out of a London, England, pub, they were walking and joking next to the Thames river when “the conversation came up about a joke we made years ago about swimming to the other side,” Bellow said. “Watch this,” Pawsey told him, and “started taking his clothes off and chucking them everywhere then dived head first into the river.” He made it to within 10 feet of the other side when he stopped swimming and sank beneath the surface. “Alcohol clearly clouded his judgment,” said Coroner Alison Thompson, ruling that Pawsey died of misadventure. “The alcohol [in his blood] was almost at a level that could have caused his death on its own.” (MS/London Evening Standard) ...If the alcohol doesn’t kill you, the alcohol might.