Buster

Poor Guy’s Ocean Burial Goes Awry. Very, Very Awry.

After Daniel Lasky died earlier this month from Lou Gehrig’s Disease, the 48-year-old North Carolina man’s family wrapped his body, placed him on dry ice, and drove south to Fort Lauderdale, where they planned to bury him at sea, as he requested.

As described in a press release issued this afternoon by the Broward County Sheriff’s Office, those plans went “awry.”

Last Friday, Lasky’s family boarded the Mary B III, a 55-foot-long fishing boat, and headed out to sea for a committal service, which was attended by his wife, pastor, family members, and the boat’s captain and crew. After the ocean burial was finished, Lasky’s family and friends went fishing in his honor before returning ashore.

The following morning, a boater discovered Lasky’s body floating in the water about 4-1/2 miles off the Hollywood, Florida coast. A police report noted that the “white male victim” was found “floating face down and completely nude with the exception of a sock on his left foot.” Cops subsequently determined that Lasky was not a crime statistic, just the victim of an ocean burial gone bad.

It is unknown why Lasky’s corpse surfaced in the ocean. Environmental Protection Administration regulations covering burials at sea note that “all necessary measures shall be taken to ensure that remains sink to the bottom rapidly and permanently.”

A representative of the Mary B III--which offers four-hour drift fishing trips for $35 per person--declined to comment about the incident. The vessel is pictured above.

Comments (8)

BRING BACK VIKING FUNERALS!
I believe if all possible that cremation should take place. This way the family will be sure that no body of evidence will show up. :)
I remember hearing about an Admiral in the Polish Navy who requested a burial at sea.Twelve Polish sailors drowned trying to dig his grave.
can we please stop tossing corpses into the ocean? for the love of pete...
Yes, all dead sea animals don't count.
I use to live in Ft. Lauderdale and love to go deep sea fishing, whether in my boat or a drift boat if I didn't have a boat. I can just imagine after a few beers, hooking into a dead body and reeling it in. Especially with my biker buddies and a bunch of eldrly tourist from New York. LOL I didn't smoke pot, but most my buddies did. Just hoped I had my camera. The catch of the day. LOL
My guess is they didn't evacuate the guy's lungs enough prior to burial. Either that or he'd somehow decomposed enough to start holding in gasses.
My uncle used to be a high ranking police officer. He told me once that you can tie an engine block to a person and throw them in the ocean and they will still re-surface due to gasses expanding within the body. The only sure way to make a body stay down was to cut them from the groin to the chest to let the gasses escape. Perhaps the body wasn't sufficiently "vented" to keep it down.....