As his would-be rescuers swam back to shore, exhausted, Adriss Cheema continued screaming for help.
“Please don’t leave me. I’m going to drown,” he shouted in Punjabi.
Then the 22-year-old’s head went under water.
Cheema and his friends arrived at Professor’s Lake in Brampton shortly after 4 p.m. Saturday to enjoy the warm weather. While the others lounged on the rocky shoreline, Cheema stripped down to track pants and an undershirt and dove into the water.
“He swam 50 feet so quickly, like an Olympic swimmer,” Haris Choudhry said.
Choudhry had just stepped ashore from his own swim when Cheema began calling for help. Having barely caught his breath, he bolted back into the water.
Two other swimmers had already reached Cheema, but the Brampton man was panicked, flapping his arms around in the air.
“He kept saying, ‘I’m going to die. I’m going to die,’” Choudhry said.
But each time the swimmers got close, Cheema latched on and dragged them under water, witnesses said.
“He kept pulling them down,” said Choudhry, who was treading water just metres away from the struggling swimmer, too tired himself to go any further.
“We tried our best. But if we stayed any longer, we would have drowned. I hardly made it back to shore myself,” he said.
On shore, Cheema’s friend Mohsin Akhtar called police, but by the time officers arrived, the swimmer had been under water for more than five minutes.
An OPP chopper whirred above the water as the rescuers attempted to locate the body, but police say surface currents caused poor visibility.
Professor’s Lake, a popular summer refuge near Bramlea Rd. and Bovaird Dr. E., is a man-made lake fed by a nearby spring.
There is rarely a current, said Choudhry, who frequents the lake during the summer.
“But the current was strong (on Saturday),” he said.
It took police about three hours to recover the body. As they searched, Cheema’s friends waited on shore, shaking and crying.
“He was a good friend. It’s so hard to think he’s gone,” said Akhtar, who lived in the same Kings Cross Rd. apartment building as Cheema.
“(On Saturday night) I kept waiting, expecting, for him to come to my door like he always did.”
He described his friend as “relaxed and jolly,” and said Cheema was in particularly good spirits because he had been hired at warehouse on Friday after weeks of job hunting.
Police don’t believe alcohol played a factor in the drowning. An autopsy will be performed to determine if Cheema had any pre-existing medical conditions.
The area does have swimming beach but that stretch of the shore is not yet open to the public. Where Cheema was isn’t a designated swimming area, police said.
The death is the second water-related tragedy to happen in Brampton this past week. A 4-year-old girl nearly died Thursday after she was found in a pool. She remains in critical condition.
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