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The other boy's body was found a day after they went missing. The boys were identified as Clyde Schimanski III and Nicholas Cianciotto III.
Officials said divers were at the scene all day Wednesday. Morris County Acting Prosecutor Fredric Knapp said the two 15-year-old boys "were deeply loved by their families and friends."
Schimanski's father told NBC New York Tuesday that his son told him by phone that he and a friend planned to ride their bikes on Budd Lake in Mount Olive. When the father heard helicopters and saw the news reports, he rushed down to the lake.
Friends of the two boys brought flowers and lit candles at a makeshift memorial outside Budd Lake Chapel Tuesday night.
Police began searching for the boys after several 911 calls came in reporting screams for help coming from the lake in Mount Olive Township shortly before 6:30 p.m.
One of the 911 callers, William Hardy, who lives across the lake, said he heard cries and went to the lake in the dark to investigate.
"We heard some individuals calling for help, saying, 'Please help us. Please save us, someone help,'" said Hardy.
Hardy ventured onto the ice to locate the voices but could not safely get far enough to reach them.
"I took the flashlight and walked out about 800 feet," he said. "They're still another 100 feet in front of me, the ice is cracking. I can see a cell phone, I can still hear them. They're still talking to me and then the firefighters came."
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This is so sad. Please parents have a talk with your kids about the dangers of being on ice during the winter. This happens every year and it is just not children either. Two adults here in Illinois went missing while ice fishing. The winter has not been cold enough and long enough for anyone to be out on the ice. Being on the ice is like pulling in front of a moving train or 18-wheeler. You literally have to talk to them every year about this to remind them of the dangers. It is very tempting for a young person to get on the ice if one of his or her friends is doing the same thing. The only safe ice is up in Canada this year or on an ice rink where there is no depth. Make sure you just don't tell them, show them these news stories too, and it will be much more real to them. Sorry for the families loss, hopefully somehow this will prevent more tragedies like this from occurring.
I don't understand why the father let them go. I know kids do stupid things, but he should have told them NO. I know people go out ice fishing every year. Alot of times their trucks fall in. The parents will have to live with this now, Sorry, so sorry.
I would think that the state's Department of Natural Resources, or Department of Fish and Game might inform the public through their web sites, about ice thickness. The principals of the schools could inform the students and parents about ice thickness in their areas. They have school closings because of snow, why can't they tell the kids about thin ice conditions on lakes and ponds? And the other thing... you just don't ever go out on river ice.
Why? Because these days kids are, to use their favorite words, "extreeeeme", do "awesome" things and are "fearless". I feel for the person that couldn't help that was so close yet so far.
It all comes down to risk acceptance. Some people are more willing to "challenge" themselves than others are. They may very well have assumed the ice to be thick enough. They may have even "tested" the ice by checking its thickness. Problem is, it wasn't thick enough where they fell through.
There are places that I know of that support the weight of vehicles on ice one day and literally have open water the next.
Lets put the blame where it belongs - on the teens. At 15 you should know better than to ride bikes on a barely frozen lake.
Steve - im as liberal as it comes, but come on. The govt isnt responsible for everything.
This was natural selection at it's finest.
You know what I dont ever do? Walk on ice on lakes...
why?
Becauase I might fall through.
It really IS that simple.
Just dont do it. There's no need.
Jessica... The government monitors ice and snow for all sorts of reasons. You may as well use the information for the purpose you personally intend for it. Airplanes on floats which use water in warm weather to take off and land on, use skis in the winter. This requires ice depth to support the plane, passengers and cargo. Ice and snow are monitored for agricultural water runoff for irrigation planning. Ice is monitored for spring flooding. In some northern sections of the country, communities of ice fishing shacks build up, with roads and everything. They have to monitor the ice for that. Ice is monitored for barge and other cargo traffic and "season". If a school principal can tell a kid not to kiss a swing set in winter, they sure as hell can tell them about ice dangers. Your tax money has all ready gone to this information, it's not like you are creating additional expense.
its winter and already dark at 630 pm. why would anyone say okay to their child riding their bike accross a lake? it would be impossible to see ahead in the fading light if ice was thin or developing hairline cracks. these kids didnt have to die. while i feel for the loss overall, i am sickened that so many parents dont use common sense and let their kids out in the world to do things that lead to their early demise. then we read about these stories and see how easily the accident or abduction could have been avoided. By the time i was seven, i knew that you couldnt trust ice--the frozen edges would not mean the center was frozen. i knew never ever go out on any frozen form of water after dark. i cant imagine raising a child near water and not having them know these basics at an early age. i cannot imagine getting a call from my son saying that he was riding his bike accross the lake into the fast coming night and saying okay. it makes me mad at the father, and while i cant imagine ill be popular for saying this, i do believe this was a good kid letting his dad know where he was and what he was up to and that dad could have made all the difference in the outcome of this story. not just for his son but maybe for the other boy as well.
Kids being kids . . .
Deepest sympathy for families and friends.
Mom in IL, a bunch of guys just finished building an ice house on a lake in N WI. . . literally. It's made from blocks of ice. What matter are caution and knowledge of conditions.
as well as thickness of the ice and weight load.
How sad .... RIP
The boy's father said his son said they were going to ride their bikes on the lake. Nowhere does it say he told the boy not to do it. I wonder if he did? How sad.
What to say..?
Deepest condolences.
Too many young victims in this country.
A/noon. We are battling bushfires you are battling ice and snow....the world really is a strange place at times. Feel for the rescuers who could not save them. Deepest sympathy to the family and friends of the 2 boys lost...from across the Pacific....
Why would you ride your bike on a frozen lake? This is so sad, they were only kids and hadn't even got a chance to live their lives. I hope some teenagers read this story and start being more careful with the activities they choose to do with friends. Even if something looks like it could be fun, be sure to really think about it and decide if it's safe or not. If they would have just thought about this for a few minutes, they could have avoided their early demise. Very sad :(
My prayers and deepest sympathies go out to the families of the boys. As a father of a teen-aged boy myself, I can only imagine the grief in your heart!
Yep. Pray. God was a lot of help while these boys were dying. When will common sense ever take hold. Whatever god there may be does NOT interfere "down here".
Dear Michael1601,
It is very obvious to me from your response that at one time you had some sort of belief in God, perhaps you attended church growing up, or something along those lines, and you are now bitter about it for reasons that are unknown to me. I can tell you that I get it...I grew up in a family that attended church every Sunday, and as I grew older I became deeply passionate about science, and in particular my favorite subject was astronomy. As I began to learn about such things as evolution, the big bang theory etc., I began to have serious doubts about God, and so some thirty years ago, as a teenager I stopped going to church when I reached the age that my parents allowed me to decide for myself. Fortunately for me, that was not the end of the story, because a few years later a very synchronistic chain of events took place that demanded my attention. It was so mind bending that I simply could not ignore it, and because I was a scientist, I made a decision to investigate, having no idea that this decision would set the course of my future in a whole new direction and lead to an entirely new paradigm being grounded in science...
Budd Lake, I know it well. My foster brother came from that neck of the woods.
I had a Black friend who had a bad habit of sniffing paint when I was young. He was also on our Pop Warner football team. He tried drying his football Jersey in his oven one day because he was running late for practice. He set the damn thing on fire. He showed up with holes in his Jersey for practice and we all laughed our a$$es off. About a couple weeks latter a lot of sirens were going off down the street and the whole town went to investigate. We traced the sirens to a lagoon across town. It was a bitter cold night. The lagoon was frozen over. The Sheriffs dept. and Fire Department were there. They had a small aluminum boat with a couple of men in it cracking the ice and dragging the bottom with grappling hooks. The whole place was lit up with Flood lights and search lights and it seemed like the whole town was there watching. They finally hooked onto something and dragged it to the shore. Everyone thought it was a water logged log at first but in a few minutes you could see it was a body and the body was a ghost white grey corpse. I could clearly see who it was. It was my black friend.
I thought to my self, I bet he was huffing paint again and walked out onto the Ice in a daze and fell through the damn ice.
That stayed with me for the rest of my life.
Ted,
Just curious, what was the relevance of stating that your friend was black?
I would suspect it was the contrast with his corpse. Trying to convey the entire image of the experience.
does your black friend have a name, or you do you just call him "my black friend"?
weird story...somehow doubt this black kid was actually your friend, just "a black kid" you knew.
otherwise, you'd just have given him a name. and perhaps mentioned that he was black, but when they pulled him up was ghostly white...
just a thought, not trying to critique but I guess I did didnt I?
B from NY
As soon as I read this story, those memories came flooding back. When they were pulling him from the water I didn't believe it was my friend because he was ghost white grey. His left arm was extended straight out like someone who signals a left turn and he was completely rigid. When I got closer there was no mistake about it, he was my friend. I still remember it clearly like it happened yesterday. That was about 35 years ago.
From that point on I steered clear of any frozen bodies of water unless I was absolutely sure it was safe.
Jessica-1170252
I didn't want to say his name just in case his relatives were reading this. They went through enough pain losing a teenage son.
He was a loyal friend, a good kid in retrospect with some addiction problems but a good person.
@ted415784 I noticed with your replies you still never answered B from NY what was the revelance in mentioning that he was black. Do you categorize all your friends. Blacks in this column, white here, hispanics there, asians over here. I don't get it. Subconciously I think you have race issues and probably do not realize it.
smitty:
maybe if you read his posts you would understand you stupid troll.
they told their father they were going to ride bikes on a lake in the dark? And he didn't say, "STOP"??? Something is missing in this article. Common sense.
yeah i used to walk out on scots run lake at french creek park in PA. people used to ice fish there. at the dam end of the lake it was ok, it could be a foot thick, but at the upper end of the lake was where the water fed into it from streams. at that end it might only be inches thick. bad news. you could walk across the lake but hear the ice cracking underneath, like pressure cracks, not actually giving way. spooky though. i didn't do it anymore after that unless it was really cold and frozen for a long time. but i could imagine riding on narrow bike tires would give a smaller spot to transmit the force into the ice thus easier breaking. sad. young people and parents, they make a lot of mistakes they don't realize at the time but hopefully get to look back on. not in this case.
Horribly sad.
Now if only this frozen guy could have gotten together with the burned girl from yesterday's news. Then they would have both been fine.
Joe,
You will never be fine until you decide to pull your head out of your azz.
If your child tells you hey I am going to walk...ride my bike or anything similar on a frozen lake HOW ABOUT NO...
So Hardy goes out there with only a flashlight? Was he curious to watch, or trying to help??? Grab a damn rope man...a canoe...anything that floats.
Oh my... this is terrible. When I was a kid I did a couple of really risky things that, looking back, I can't believe I came out of unscathed.
I agree, parents should definitely talk to their kids about the dangers that lurk in things that seem exciting at the time. But my guess is that risk is the appealing thing about doing it. Ughhhh. Those boys knew better but made a bad decision that cost them their life. So sad.
This is the perfect case of parents not mining their children because this boy called his father and said that they were going to ride there bikes on the lake that had frozen over. The father should have told him to bring his butt home immediately.
you must have been listening in on their phone conversation right?
May God Bless the families. So sad. And especially sad (and ironic) that they were both 'Tres' (namesakes for the fathers and grandfathers). My heart goes out to them.
"Schimanski's father told NBC New York Tuesday that his son told him by phone that he and a friend planned to ride their bikes on Budd Lake in Mount Olive. When the father heard helicopters and saw the news reports, he rushed down to the lake."
When your kid calls you and tells you something like that, you call the cops to stop them and then drive over yourself to make sure they aren't on the ice. Lakes in Jersey are rarely safe to walk on when they freeze, and based on what family back home tell me, it's been a fairly mild winter in many ways this year.
This is so sad. I pray peace for the family. Remeber folks these were 15 year old kids not even old enough to vote. I bet the road over the ice dozens of times and nothing ever happened. Please be careful when sitting in judgement of others. Everyone makes mistakes and these babies paid with their lives. My heart goes out to the parents, family and friends.
This is so sad, I hate so much, situation's like this where kid's so young are taken from us before even really experiencing all that life has to offer. My thought's and prayer's are with the family and friends of these two boy's.
Back in the 19th and early 20th century, it was not uncommon for older kids to go out on the ice alone without parental guidance for recreational activities. They relied only on their judgement. Sometimes it was good, sometimes it was bad. Sometimes their judgement was good but ice is still always unpredictable. 15 years old was considered by many a man; an adult. 15 years is an age where by then you should be capable of applying that something might be unwise not just because "mommy and daddy said so." A part of growing up. Being able to carefully evaluate and make your own decisions. Something absolutely vital to being an adult. You don't become an adult instantly, you have to learn how to be one.
Stop blaming the dad.
*A part of growing up is being able
I am in shock that the father allowed the kids to go ride their bikes on the lake. Where was his common sense? Parents today are too permissive. Lakes are dangerous during the winter. Period! Unfortunately, with common sense, you either have it or you don't. You can't teach common sense. Those last minutes of those boys was terrible I am quite sure. I hope this story is shared with all children. I constantly talk to my children about every day things, fire, water, ice, etc. It is our responsibility to teach our children. Prayers for both families and for all children. It is always terrible when a child dies no matter what the circumstances. Wake up America! Stop sticking your heads in the sand and do your part! Silence is a sin! Respect each other. We need to bring back some old fashioned rules of life!
I have raised 2 children to adulthood. When kids are out and about on their own they will make bad choices at times. I can think back at times on my childhood and on my children's childhoods and think, I/they were lucky they were not killed.
These boys had probably ridden their bikes on that lake numerous times. If they stay in the shallow areas where the ice is at least 6 inches thick they would not have had a problem. They venture out too far where the depth of the water was deeper and therefore the ice not as thick, especially if there was a current that moves through the lake, they run the risk of falling through.
I would be willing to bet the parents had warned these boys about the hazaards of what they were doing.
Sucks that they died. But remember what Darwin said......