A man attempting an epic 80-mile (128 kilometer) swim across Lake Michigan said he gave up on the third day after losing two batteries for a critical GPS device and ending up badly off course.
Jim Dreyer, 60, was pulled from the water last Thursday after 60 miles (96 kilometers). He said he had been swimming from Michigan to Wisconsin for hours without a GPS, relying only on a wrist compass and his reading of the sky and waves.
A support boat pulled up and informed him that he had been swimming north all day — “the wrong direction,” said Dreyer, who had left Grand Haven on Tuesday.
“What a blow!” he said in a report that he posted online. “I should have been in the home stretch, well into Wisconsin waters with about 23 miles (37 kilometers) to go. Instead, I had 47 miles (75 kilometers) to go, and the weather window would soon close.”
Dreyer said his “brain was mush” and he was having hallucinations about a steel wall — “stuck my hand right through it” — and cargo ships. He figured he would need a few more days to reach Milwaukee, but there was a forecast of 9-foot (2.7-meter) waves.
“We all knew that success was now a long shot and the need for rescue was likely if I continued,” Dreyer said.
Dreyer, whose nickname is The Shark, crossed Lake Michigan in 1998, starting in Two Rivers, Wisconsin, and finishing in Ludington, Michigan. But three attempts to do it again since last summer have been unsuccessful.
Dreyer was towing an inflatable boat with nutrition and supplies last week. On the second day, he paused to get fresh AA batteries to keep a GPS device working. But during the process, he said he somehow lost the bag in the lake.
He had only a compass and nature around him to help him try to keep moving west.
"It was an accident, but it was my fault," Dreyer said of the batteries. “This is a tough pill to swallow.”
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In this image provided by Jonathan Boeve, Jim Dreyer, right, talks to his support team in Lake Michigan, Thursday, Aug. 8, 2024, on the third day of his attempt to swim from Michigan to Wisconsin. (Jonathan Boeve via AP)
FILE- With his right eye swollen shut from the swim, Jim Dreyer emerges victorious from the water, Aug. 3, 1998, after completing a 43.2-mile, 41-hour crossing of Lake Michigan. (Jon M. Brouwer/The Grand Rapids Press via AP, File)
Jim Dreyer heads out into Lake Michigan in Grant Haven, Mich., Aug. 6, 2024, in his attempt to swim to Wisconsin. (Blace Carpenter/The Tribune via AP)
RAMALLAH, West Bank (AP) — The Israeli military said Tuesday an American activist killed in the West Bank last week was likely shot “indirectly and unintentionally” by its soldiers, drawing a strong rebuke from U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and the activist's family.
Israel said a criminal investigation has been launched into the killing of Aysenur Ezgi Eygi, a 26-year-old activist from Seattle who was taking part in a demonstration against settlements. Doctors who treated Eygi, who also held Turkish citizenship, said she was shot in the head.
Blinken condemned the “unprovoked and unjustified” killing when asked about the Israeli inquiry at a news conference in London. “No one should be shot while attending a protest,” he said. “The Israeli security forces need to make some fundamental changes in the way they operate in the West Bank.”
Eygi's family in the U.S. released a statement saying “we are deeply offended by the suggestion that her killing by a trained sniper was in any way unintentional. The disregard shown for human life in the inquiry is appalling.”
During Friday's demonstration, clashes broke out between Palestinians throwing stones and Israeli troops firing tear gas and ammunition, according to Jonathan Pollak, an Israeli protester who witnessed the shooting of Eygi.
Pollak said the violence had subsided about a half hour before Eygi was shot, after protesters and activists had withdrawn several hundred meters (yards) away from the site of the demonstration. Pollak said he saw two Israeli soldiers mount the roof of a nearby home, train a gun in the group’s direction and fire, with one bullet hitting Eygi.
Israel said its inquiry into Eygi’s killing “found that it is highly likely that she was hit indirectly and unintentionally by (Israeli army) fire which was not aimed at her, but aimed at the key instigator of the riot.” It expressed its “deepest regret” at her death.
International Solidarity Movement, the activist group Egyi was volunteering with, said it “entirely rejects” the Israeli statement and that the “shot was aimed directly at her.”
The killing came amid a surge of violence in the West Bank since the Israel-Hamas war began in October, with increasing Israeli raids, attacks by Palestinian militants on Israelis, attacks by Israeli settlers on Palestinians and heavier military crackdowns on Palestinian protests.
Israel says it thoroughly investigates allegations of its forces killing civilians and holds them accountable. It says soldiers often have to make split-second decisions while operating in areas where militants hide among civilians. But human rights groups say soldiers are very rarely prosecuted, and even in the most shocking cases — and those captured on video — they often get relatively light sentences.
The Palestinian Authority held a funeral procession for Eygi in the West Bank city of Nablus on Monday. Turkish authorities said they are working on repatriating her body to Turkey for burial in the Aegean coastal town of Didim, as per her family’s wishes.
Eygi's uncle said in an interview with the Turkish TV channel HaberTurk that she kept her visit to the West Bank secret from at least some of her family members. She said she was traveling to Jordan to help Palestinians there, he said.
"She hid the fact that she was going to Palestine. She blocked us from her social media posts so that we would not see them,” Yilmaz Eygi said.
The deaths of American citizens in the West Bank have drawn international attention, such as the fatal shooting of a prominent Palestinian-American journalist, Shireen Abu Akleh, in 2022 in the Jenin refugee camp.
Several independent investigations and reporting by The Associated Press determined that Abu Akleh was likely killed by Israeli fire. Months later, the military said there was a “high probability” one of its soldiers had mistakenly killed her but that no one would be punished.
In January 2022, Omar Assad, a 78-year-old Palestinian-American, died of a heart attack after Israeli troops at a checkpoint dragged him from his car and made him lie facedown, bound, temporarily gagged and blindfolded. The military ruled out criminal charges and said it was reprimanding one commander and removing two others from leadership roles for two years.
The U.S. had planned to sanction a military unit linked to abuses of Palestinians in the West Bank but ended up dropping the plan.
The deaths of Palestinians who do not have dual nationality rarely receive the same scrutiny.
Human rights groups say Israel military investigations into Palestinians' deaths reflect a pattern of impunity. B’Tselem, a leading Israeli watchdog, became so frustrated that in 2016 it halted its decades-long practice of assisting investigations and called them a “whitewash.”
Last year, an Israeli court acquitted a member of the paramilitary Border Police charged with reckless manslaughter in the deadly shooting of 32-year-old Eyad Hallaq, an autistic Palestinian man in Jerusalem’s Old City in 2020. The case had drawn comparisons to the police killing of George Floyd in the United States.
In 2017, Israeli soldier Elor Azaria was convicted for manslaughter and served nine months after he killed a wounded, incapacitated Palestinian attacker in the West Bank city of Hebron. The combat medic was caught on video fatally shooting Abdel Fattah al-Sharif, who was lying motionless on the ground.
That case deeply divided Israelis, with the military saying Azaria had clearly violated its code of ethics, while many Israelis — particularly on the nationalist right — defended his actions and accused military brass of second-guessing a soldier operating in dangerous conditions.
Associated Press reporters Matthew Lee and Aamer Madhani in Washington contributed to this report.
Follow AP’s Gaza coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/israel-hamas-war
This undated family photo provided by the International Solidarity Movement on Friday, Sept. 6, 2024, shows Aysenur Ezgi Eygi of Seattle. (Courtesy of the Eygi family/International Solidarity Movement via AP)
ADDS WITNESS SAYS: Two fellow activists of Aysenur Ezgi Eygi, 26, who a witness says was fatally shot by Israeli soldiers while participating in an anti-settlement protest in the West Bank, carry posters with her name and photo during Eygi's funeral procession in the West Bank city of Nablus, Monday, Sept. 9, 2024. (AP Photo/Nasser Nasser)
