USF student drowns in cave-diving accident

Tommy Fletcher, a driver on Engine 31 out of Station 3 in Homosassa Trail, got the call shortly after 6 p.m. Sunday.

Amy Ryan, a 22-year-old University of South Florida senior, had gone diving with friends into caves below Seven Sisters Springs in Chassahowitzka and didn't resurface.

Fletcher said his truck got to the springs in 14 minutes. Though the Citrus County Sheriff's Office has a dive team, they were at least a half-hour away.

Fletcher, 32, a veteran diver who is certified for cave diving, decided he would go in himself.

"I had been in that cave several times before," said Fletcher. "I knew the cave well enough to at least take a look."

Fletcher had no equipment but borrowed a dive mask from a nearby boat and jumped into the chilly water.

There are two holes that open up a couple of feet under the surface, said Fletcher. One is about eight feet in diameter and eight feet deep and another is three feet in diameter 10 feet under the surface. The two holes are about 15 feet apart, connected by an underground cave about five-feet wide, two-to-three feet under the surface, he said.

Fletcher said he dove four or five times before finding her.

"I took a rope in with me and looked through the cave," he said. "It took me good four or five minutes to find her. She was pretty far up inside a dead-end cave."

After a few more dives to position the body for recovery, "I was able to get her out, and then turned her over to Nature Coast EMS," Fletcher said.

Ryan apparently was free diving - diving without a tank - and wasn't wearing any diving equipment when she was found, Fletcher said.

Ryan was a biomedical science major at the University of South Florida, was supposed to graduate in less than three weeks and then, hopefully, attend medical school, said Stuart Silverman, dean of the USF Honors College.

But those plans will never be fulfilled.

Neither Ryan nor any of her friends were using scuba gear, sheriff's spokeswoman Gail Tierney said. The divers were sharing one set of goggles between them, she said.

Ryan was a "somewhat inexperienced diver," Tierney said, but at least two members of her party were dive certified. Tierney did not know whether any were cave certified.

For Silverman, the news was devastating.

"She is engaging," he said. "She is bright. She is verbal, articulate and she's got sparkle. Some people just kind of shine. They just have that gregarious personality."

Ryan graduated from Bayside High School in Palm Bay with straight A's, school secretary Pat Clark said. When she got to USF, she wasn't sure whether she wanted to be a nurse or physician.

She explored a career in medicine because a childhood friend died of cancer, Silverman said.

"We talked a little bit," Silverman said. "I told her not to worry too much about it, to gain some experience, shadowing and volunteering in hospitals and see what nurses do and docs do."

She did and opted to become a physician, Silverman said.

"She was waiting to hear if she was accepted at the USF College of Medicine," he said. "She finished her honors thesis a year early, which is absolutely unbelievable."

The topic, he said, was the affects of heat illness on the body.

Ryan would have made a "phenomenal physician," Silverman said.

"She was hardworking, bright and volunteers when we need students," he said. "She was a leader on campus in the premed society. Not only is she bright, but she also has an ideal bedside manner."

Like Silverman, Todd Scheuerer, principal of Southwest Middle School where Ryan attended 7th and 8th grades in 2002 and 2003, said his school is "devastated."

"Her mother, Christine, has been an employee here for 17 years," said Scheuerer. Ryan "was an outstanding student here at Southwest and had a wonderful, bright future ahead of her. She had just been accepted into medical school."

Christine Ryan, "used to brag about her to everyone how wonderful she was," said Scheuerer.

On his Facebook page, Amy Ryan's boyfriend, Steven Orosz of Zephyrhills, who was one of those diving with Amy, posted:

"Oh it's the Little things you miss / So say goodbye to love and hold your head / Up high, there's no need to rush / Were all just waiting ..."

Fletcher said while the cave where Ryan was found is not that difficult for an experienced, certified cave diver, it is not the place for a novice.

"Any time you go in what's called an overhead obstruction atmosphere, without specialized training and equipment, it is very dangerous."

Fletcher, who grew up in the Florida Keys and worked there before joining Citrus County Fire Rescue a little more than three years ago, has a message for anyone considering diving into caves like the ones under Seven Sisters Springs, which have proved fatal before.

"Do not go anywhere in the water without proper training," he said.