The mother of a 2011 Lake Tapps drowning victim and friends and family of drowning victim Quentin Boggan joined together at the June 26 city council meeting to lobby for safety measures on the Allan Yorke Park shore.

Tina Lombard is the mother of Robert Harris, a 17-year-old Federal Way boy who drowned in a different section of the lake in September.

Harris was attending a family barbecue in the county-operated Lake Tapps North Park when an errant football landed in the water. Harris dipped in to retrieve it and disappeared under the water. Family members swam out to the scene and couldn’t find him. A grid search by the Pierce County Sheriff’s Office located his body 54 minutes later.

“Each of us around that beach died that day,” Lombard said to the council during public comment. “I cannot tell you how many family members, how many grandkids, nephews, cousins that died on that day with him.”

Lombard was part of a contingent that had gathered at the city council meeting to argue the need for greater safety measures—such as lifeguards to watch lake swimmers—following the most recent drowning death of 16-year-old Quentin Boggan on June 21.

Sheriff’s deputies and emergency rescue workers arrived at the scene of Harris’s death quickly, Lombard said, but it was still too late.

“What I was feeling was damage control,” she said. “I felt like they knew they were there for damage control, and today I’d like to offer some suggestions on preventative ways we can not have our rescue go out there for damage control.”

Among her suggestions were an emergency landline phone, a floating dock, a floating rope “wall” to keep swimmers from venturing out too far, and a sign warning of the risk of hypothermia, muscle cramps and death.

Another speaker, Sherrie Cinkovich, came before council on behalf of Boggan’s parents, she said. She called the teen’s death a “very preventable drowning.”

“There needs to be lifeguards for however long the season lasts, at least,” she said. “There were not any lifeguards there that day. It took Quentin’s best friends—children—and his big brother to try to save his life, and now they feel like they failed. Children. Between the ages of 14 and 19. That’s not fair to them.

“I don’t care if it’s ropes, I don’t care if it’s a sign, I don’t care if it’s two months of a lifeguard out there,” she said.

Another group related to the drowning response, represented at the meeting by Leslie Dupree, expressed the desire to raise funds to place a sign of warnings and safety measures in the grassy section of shore.

Bonney Lake Mayor Neil Johnson told Dupree that a sign was one of the first things the council discussed when they heard about the drowning, and that it’s “going to happen” with input from the Boggan family.

“I’ve lived in the city of Bonney Lake for 53 years, in the Old Ward 5 area that’s part of Allan Yorke Park,” said former city councilman Dan Decker. “In that time, I’ve never seen anything other than a shabby ‘No Lifeguard on Duty’ sign. I think it’s time that the city of Bonney Lake produces a minimum of at least two lifeguards, during the summer period when the lake is up.”