#Family of 9-year-old boy who drowned at NJ water park sues camp

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The drowning victim’s father R’ Moshe Shaindel speaks at the funeral.
Paul Martinka

The family of the 9-year-old boy who drowned at a New Jersey water park last year has sued the boy’s summer camp alleging negligence, new court papers show.

Hersch Meilich Grossman, of Borough Park, Brooklyn, died in an outdoor pool at Sahara Sam’s Oasis Water Park in West Berlin, N.J. while he was on a trip with Orthodox Jewish Camp Bnei Belz on July 30, 2019.

“You send your son to camp and he doesn’t come home,” family lawyer Alan Shapey told The Post. “I want the jury to assess what is it worth to lose your son.”

Grossman — who is referred to as H.G. in the lawsuit — had been with the camp on a scheduled outing alongside roughly 270 other kids and 25 camp supervisors, the Brooklyn Supreme Court lawsuit says.

A few minutes after the kids were told to leave the pool around 7:25 p.m., Grossman was found “submerged underwater in a five-foot deep section of the pool,” read the court papers filed by Grossman’s father Moses Grossman.

The camp counselors and staffers allegedly failed to see the boy submerged underwater and failed to properly supervise him. And the camp was negligent in “providing appropriate levels of staffing, training, supervising, and surveillance of the campers … including the decedent,” the court papers filed Monday allege.

Grossman, “suffered severe conscious pain and suffering and fear of impending death,” the court documents say.

“They had 300 children and a whole bunch of counselors and nobody saw this child until he was submerged underwater,” Shapey said. “And I can’t understand how that could possibly happen.”

Shapey said there were plenty of counselors but, “we don’t know what they were doing when they should have been supervising the pool.”

The family also plans to sue the water park owner Apex Parks Group — which only had one life guard manning the pool, Shapey alleged. But they can’t file that lawsuit until Apex resolves a bankruptcy matter, Shapey explained.

“It’s a terrible tragedy for the family. I don’t know how they are ever going to get over it. How do you ever get over the loss of your son?” Shapey said.

A phone number for Camp Bnei Belz was not in service. Sahara Sam’s and Apex Parks Group did not immediately return requests for comment.