PENTICTON – A Coroner Service investigation has revealed why the drowning death of a Penticton woman was initially considered suspicious by the RCMP.
At about 2:00 a.m. on June 7th 2014, Grace Marie Capot-Blanc was found floating face down in Sawmill Lake in the hills west of Oliver.
Capot-Blanc and her spouse were tent camping at the forestry recreation site when other campers were awakened by the couple having an
argument.
He says he then left to sleep elsewhere.
The other campers later heard a woman shouting for help and then a splash in the lake.
One of them phoned 9-1-1 reporting a disturbance. Police arrived and recovered the body about 10 metres from the shore.
Capot-Blanc’s spouse told investigators she was a non-swimmer, afraid of water, and he didn’t think she would intentionally go near or into the lake.
At first, police treated her death as suspicious.
However, foul play was ruled out through scene investigation, which found no evidence of a struggle, witness interviews and autopsy findings.
“The autopsy found there was no trauma to Ms. Capot-Blanc’s body or any other evidence to indicate she was forced into the water,” writes coroner Walter Burns in his report. “Although this is not a witnessed event, it is reasonable to conclude that Ms. Capot-Blanc inadvertently entered the lake while disoriented, after the verbal dispute with her spouse, and was unable to self-rescue due to her heavy level of alcohol intoxication.”
Burns classified the death of the 54-year-old woman as accidental and made no recommendations.
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