[otachack]

Second on the "good swimmer drowning" part. I once swam in a pool with a few cousins of mine. I was around 18 and just finished a life guarding course at school. One cousin was around 11 years old.

She was panicking next to me in the pool all of a sudden and climbed on top of me. She wasn't heavy but her human effort to grab and exert pressure to use me as a float to stay above water forced me under. It was hard to get back up for air, and very sudden to which I didn't have a ton of air to begin with.

I remembered training, which was to pull the victim down with you to short circuit their brain into letting go, and it worked. I was able to swim out from her area, surface, catch a breath, and go help her to the shallow end.

[hilbert42]

"I remembered training, which was to pull the victim down with you to short circuit their brain into letting go,"

That's exactly how I was taught as part of lifesaving training along with the most effective way of swimming (and 'towing') the person to safety. BTW, that was many decades ago (presumably things haven't changed much since then). .