Dateline: June 10, 2004

Local boy drowns at Lake Greenbelt 

By Roger Estlack, Clarendon Enterprise

A ten-year-old Clarendon boy drowned at Lake Greenbelt Sunday, and officials have ruled the death an accident.

Neal D. Harris and three young friends rode their bicycles from Clarendon to go swim on the north side of the Greenbelt Dam near Sandy Beach, according to information from the Donley County Sheriff’s Office.

Sheriff Butch Blackburn said Harris had asked his mother to take them swimming and she had told them no and said she would take them later. They boy and his friends then went without her knowledge.

Harris had told a friend that he was able to swim but apparently got into trouble in an area where the depth of the lake changes quickly.

Emergency personnel were dispatched at 4:50 p.m. with units responding from the sheriff’s office, the Greenbelt Lake Patrol, Texas Department of Public Safety, the Clarendon Volunteer Fire Department Dive Team, and the Associated Ambulance Authority.

Dive team members recovered Harris at 5:37, and he was transported to Northwest Texas Hospital in Amarillo, where he was pronounced dead.

An autopsy performed in Lubbock on Monday gave the cause of death as an accidental drowning with no signs of foul play. No charges are pending in the case, Blackburn said.

Chief Deputy Randy Bond called the accident a tragedy for Clarendon and Donley County but praised the work of the dive team.

“We are really blessed to have a local dive team,” Bond said. “There ain’t nothing harder than pulling a child out like that. They have to live with that. That’s a hard job.”

Services for Harris will be held at 11 a.m. this Saturday at the First United Methodist Chruch.