Widower scatters wife's ashes in lake, falls in, dies from heart attack
A widower took his wife’s ashes to be scattered on a lake in La Porte, Ind., and ended up suffering a heart attack and dying.
WSBT-TV, a Fox affiliate in South Bend., Ind., reports 88-year-old Ralph Myata had gone there to honor his wife, who had died in April, when tragedy occurred.
“He had completed his mission, which was putting his wife’s ashes into the lake,’’ James Sprecher, a friend of Myata’s for 30 years, told WSBT.
After arriving back at the dock at Pine Lake, Sprecher said he helped Myata out of the boat and turned his back. That’s when Sprecher heard a splash and saw the old man in the seven-foot-deep water.
Sprecher, a retired physician, said he pulled Myata from the water and performed CPR, but to no avail.
“It was not a drowning,” Sprecher told the station. “He was dead when he hit the water.”
The La Porte County Coroner said Myata died of an acute myocardial arrest.
Chris Pastrick is a TribLive digital producer. An Allegheny County native, he began working for the Valley News Dispatch in 1993 and joined the Trib in 1997. He can be reached at cpastrick@triblive.com.
Remove the ads from your TribLIVE reading experience but still support the journalists who create the content with TribLIVE Ad-Free.