Unreal Display Of Survival In NY: Girl, 6, found clinging to corpse in New York lake

A 6-year-old girl found clinging to the corpse of a woman was rescued Monday from Lake Gleneida in New York by a group of people in a rowboat, police said.  The girl was taken to Putnam Hospital Center and said to be uninjured.

The woman she was with, whose cause of death is currently unknown, was identified as Pamela Kaner, 59, of Brewster, N.Y., according to the New York City Department of Environmental Protection. She was pronounced dead at the scene, and her body was taken to the hospital, where an autopsy will be performed.

Three boaters -- two men and a woman -- who had gone out to fish on Lake Gleneida, about 55 miles outside of New York City, noticed the girl holding onto a body several hundred feet from the shore crying out for help Monday afternoon.

The child was not wearing a life vest, one of the boaters told police, so they placed a life vest on her and brought her to shore where they called Carmel police.  Town police and rescue crews, which included a dive team from the Mahopac Fire Department and volunteer ambulance and firefighters, arrived to the lake at about 5 p.m. after receiving a 911 call, Carmel Police Sgt. John Dearman told The Journal News.

Dearman said there was no opportunity for life-saving measures to be performed on Kaner.  The woman was an acquaintance of the 6-year-old’s mother and had been watching the girl briefly while her mother took her car to the mechanic.