‘This place is very unforgiving,’ park rangers warn of Eno quarry after teen’s death
The body of a teen who died in the Eno River Rock Quarry was found Thursday morning, two days after he slipped into the deep waters of the abandoned stoned pit.
Sonar scans helped lead divers to 18-year-old Nicklaus Brown, who was found close to where he had jumped in Tuesday evening.
“It is painful to share this news,” said Katie Hall, spokeswoman for N.C. Division of Parks and Recreation. “Halifax County Rescue Divers recovered Mr. Brown’s body in approximately 25 feet of water near where he was last seen Tuesday after jumping into the quarry.”
Brown graduated last week from Eno River Academy (formerly Orange Charter School) in Hillsborough, where he was on the swim and baseball teams. He was set to attend the University of North Carolina at Wilmington in the fall.
“Nick was one of the most gregarious students that we knew,” executive director Lisa Bair told WRAL. “He knew everybody by name, and all the younger students really looked up to him. “
The teen was with a friend Tuesday night when he jumped from an embankment, Hall said. He resurfaced briefly but went under the water and wasn’t seen again.
Crews responded at about 5:25 p.m. Tuesday and searched for Brown for more than four hours Tuesday and again Wednesday when the effort turned from a rescue to a recovery operation.
On Thursday, responders spent almost five hours searching before they found him.
‘A very dangerous place’
“The quarry is a beautiful place, however, it’s also a very dangerous place,” said Jay Greenwood, the Piedmont region superintendent for North Carolina State Parks.
“This is not a designated swim area, so it’s very hazardous,” he said. “There are a lot of rock outcrops and stumps, making the bottom very treacherous.”
Greenwood said he and other rangers in Eno River State Park continually advise people against entering the quarry. There is no law in North Carolina that can keep people from swimming in non-designated bodies of water, he said, but they try to warn visitors by signs and word of mouth.
“At one point in time there was a fence around here but people would just climb the fence,” Greenwood said.
“It’s next to impossible to keep people out of the water,” he said.
Since May 1, 2018, there have been 16 medical calls to the quarry, from broken ankles to near drownings and deaths. The last drowning happened in 2015, Hall said.
Unknown hazards
From the cliffs, one can see the occasional branch or rock jutting out from the surface, but more, unknown hazards lie below, said Alicia Stemper, spokeswoman for the Orange County Sheriff’s Office.
“Even small, little distances [to swim] are enormous and dangerous when you can’t see,” she said.
After Hurricane Florence, about a foot and a half of rock ledge collapsed at one of the popular jumping areas — the same cliff that Brown jumped from.
“Since it is a quarry, there is a lot of erosion on these cliffs,” Greenwood said. “The cliffs erode away and trees fall into the quarry, it’s never really dependable on the shoreline of how much of the shoreline is going to fall in, and [on] that cliff face there’s stumps and rocks, so it’s a very hazardous location.”
People jumping off the cliffs sometimes don’t jump far enough away, he added, so they end up hitting stumps or rock outcrops in the lake.
“Even for [experienced] swimmers swimming here is dangerous,” Greenwood said.
“If you’re diving off a cliff that’s 25 feet high and you hit the water, the water can feel like a brick wall,” he said. “The bottom is 60 feet deep, so it’s very difficult to recover from an injury you receive while swimming or diving, so it’s a very unforgiving place.”
This story was originally published May 30, 2019 at 11:56 AM.
