The man, Kenneth Brown, 20, slipped under the freezing water 18 minutes after falling through the ice, but local firefighters didn’t launch an inflatable boat until just before he disappeared. The firefighters pulled Brown’s body out of the water roughly an hour after they arrived.
Onlookers demanded firefighters rescue the man, and even volunteered for the task, but were told by the Champaign police to stay away.
A Champaign firefighter declined to comment on Brown’s slow-motion death, while 22 firefighters and six vehicles stood on the nearby shore.
“We can’t say anything about it,” the firefighter told The Daily Caller. “We’re directing all [responses] through campaign police department.”
The Champaign Police Department did not return TheDC’s calls.
Brown’s death has prompted complaints in the city about the inaction by police and firefighters.
“In this crisis situation, when a man was drowning, because of the potential danger to themselves they just stood there?” said one commentator, ‘cnneka1’, in the comments section of the website of the local newspaper, The News Gazette. “For 20 minutes? What are they getting paid for?”
“Myself and one other man got so angry watching the fire dept rescue teams ‘playing on the bank’ that we offered to be tied off and go in ourselves, and we certainly were threatened with arrest !,” claimed another user, named perryupopcorn.
“The only thing the police did was move the ever increasing angry crowd back when they started demanding the fire dept at least attempt to rescue the young man !,” perryupopcorn added in another comment.
