IF YOU’VE SEEN your news readers and presenters have buckets of ice-cold water thrown over them in the past 48 hours. Or if you’ve done it yourself, while donating money to a Motor Neurone charity. It is likely because of Corey Griffin.
Along with a number of friends, the 27-year-old started the fundraising drive for the ALS Association (MND is called ALS in the US) which has secured more than $15.6 million for the charity so far this month, as well as priceless awareness.
Griffin, himself, had raised about $100,000 of that.
In some very sad news today, it has emerged today that Corey Griffin passed away last week, before seeing the full effects of his endeavours.
He died in the early hours of Saturday morning at Nantucket Cottage Hospital in a tragic diving accident, according to Nantucket police in Massachusetts.
Police were called at 2am with a report of a man missing in the harbour after diving from a building on Straight Wharf.
According to witnesses, he jumped off the building and into the water where he floated to the surface. He then went under and did not come back up.
An off-duty lifeguard, Colin Perry, was working nearby and called to the scene. He made several rescue attempts and recovered him from the bottom of the harbour.
CPR was administered and he was brought to hospital. He was pronounced dead at 3am. Investigations are ongoing.
According to a local bartender, quoted in a report by Bloomberg, diving off the Straight Wharf building is a “kind of rite of passage” on the island.
Griffin was one of a group of friends who set up the ice-bucket challenge, inspired by former captain of the Boston College baseball team, Pete Frates.
The 27-year-old is survived by his parents, brother Michael and sister Casey.
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