A 21-year-old college student from Brooklyn drowned in a friend's pool in Plainview, Long Island. Nelson Cole was found lifeless in the deep end of friend Jeffrey Soto's parents' backyard pool around 4:16 a.m. yesterday. His friends pulled him out and performed CPR, but he was pronounced dead almost an hour later at North Shore Plainview Hospital. His mother Debra Bramlett, who said her son knew how to swim, told the Daily News, "It's the call no parent ever wants to hear, that ring at 5 in the morning."
Cole, a biochemistry major at Rochester Institute of Technology, was with others celebrating fellow RIT student Soto's 22nd birthday. According to Newsday, "Jeffrey Soto was charged with violating Nassau's social host law for providing alcohol to a 20-year-old guest, police said... [Det. Sgt. Daniel] Ayrovainen said Soto's parents knew about the party but were not charged because they believed everyone was at least 21, the legal drinking age."
Cole's family donated his organs: He was an organ donor as an "act of kindness," according to Bramlett and his sister said, "A piece of him can live on."
