{"id":216999,"date":"2015-12-18T06:06:55","date_gmt":"2015-12-17T20:06:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/?p=216999"},"modified":"2015-12-18T06:06:55","modified_gmt":"2015-12-17T20:06:55","slug":"cpa-firefighter-drowns-in-laolao","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/cpa-firefighter-drowns-in-laolao\/","title":{"rendered":"CPA firefighter drowns in Laolao"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"The<\/a>
The remote area of Laolao Bay where firefighter Raymond Villagomez was found by Department of Fire and Emergency Medical Services Search and Rescue Unit lying on the sand after spear fishing with a companion on Wednesday afternoon. Villagomez was taken to the hospital where a doctor pronounced him dead. (DEREK GERSONDE)<\/figcaption><\/figure>
\nA Commonwealth Ports Authority-Aircraft Rescue firefighter drowned while spear fishing at East Bay in Laolao on Wednesday afternoon.<\/p>\n

Raymond Villagomez, 21, was pronounced dead by a doctor at the Commonwealth Health Center at 4:42pm, according to Department of Fire and Emergency Medical Services information officer Derek Gersonde yesterday.<\/p>\n

Gersonde said that Villagomez was with one other person while spear fishing. He did not elaborate as to what happened.<\/p>\n

CPA executive director MaryAnn Q. Lizama said they are saddened by the loss of Villagomez.<\/p>\n

\u201cEveryone at CPA is still trying to wrap our heads around the untimely passing of Ray and especially at a very young age,\u201d Lizama said.<\/p>\n

Lizama said that Villagomez\u2019s brethren firefighters are most affected as they have naturally become close within the bond of brotherhood of firefighters.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe CPA board of directors, staff, and management extend our thoughts and prayers to Ray\u2019s family as they go through this difficult time. He will be dearly missed by his CPA family,\u201d Lizama said.<\/p>\n

DFEMS received a call on Wednesday at 1:46pm from an unknown person reporting a drowning incident in Laolao.<\/p>\n

The DFEMS Search and Rescue Unit searched along the cliff lines of Laolao Bay and found Villagomez lying on the sand in a remote area of the bay.<\/p>\n

The Zodiac 3 rescue boat of the Department of Public Safety\u2019s Boating Safety Unit retrieved the victim and brought him to the Smiling Cove Marina.<\/p>\n

At Smiling Cove, medics from the Garapan Fire Station were on standby. When the boat arrived, DFEMS medical technicians retrieved the body from Boating Safety officers.<\/p>\n

Gersonde said the body was already in a body bag and medical technicians saw that the victim\u2019s pupils were fixed and dilated. A white foamy discharge was coming out of the victim\u2019s mouth and nose.<\/p>\n

\u201cAll these signs are the obvious signs of death,\u201d Gersonde said.<\/p>\n

Villagomez was then taken to CHC, where he was pronounced dead.<\/p>\n

Last Nov. 14, a male Chinese tourist diver drowned while three other divers were safely rescued by DPS personnel at the Grotto in Marpi.<\/p>\n

Last June 16, a 60-year-old Korean female tourist drowned while snorkeling with some family members on Managaha Island. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A Commonwealth Ports Authority-Aircraft Rescue firefighter drowned while spear fishing at East Bay in Laolao…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":23,"featured_media":217000,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[94],"tags":[5237,124,4234,8766],"class_list":["post-216999","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-headlines","tag-boating-safety-unit","tag-cpa","tag-dfems","tag-raymond-villagomez"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/216999","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/23"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=216999"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/216999\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/217000"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=216999"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=216999"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=216999"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}