A jury has found three lifeguards not guilty of failing to take “reasonable care for the health and safety of others” on the night Armagh swimmer Christopher Rogers died.
Mr Rogers, 20, passed away after blacking out during a swim training session at Armagh’s Orchard Leisure Centre in April 2017.
During the session he had been practicing underwater swimming and breath holding exercises.
He lay at the bottom of the pool for more than five minutes before a rescue attempt was launched.
He died in Craigavon Area Hospital later that night.
On Tuesday at Newry Crown Court a jury of eight women and three men took less than two hours to find the three defendants not guilty of the charge
Lifeguards Cathal Peter Forrest McVeigh, 35, of Dunamony Road in Dungannon, James Monaghan, 26, of Folly Lane in Armagh and William Holden, 26, of Unshinagh Lane in Portadown were on duty the night he died.
They had denied a single count of being employees, they “failed to take reasonable care for the health and safety of other persons who may be affected by [their] acts or omissions at work”.
It was the defence case that the lifeguards believed Mr Rogers to be an experienced swimmer who was engaged in a training exercise; that there was no policy in relation to how long a swimmer could stay under water and that they had no training in how to recognise the type of seizure that Mr Rogers had suffered.
The prosecution said that, irrespective of their training, the men should have intervened based on a common sense approach and that they had taken too long completing role handovers during a rotation of poolside duties.
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