The lead paragraph is confusing

Re-read it. It is long, but take it a breath at a time and you will see the description is telling the reader the swimmer must have been too exhausted to lift himself out of the water when he got to the tube (in the picture) where his companions were swimming.
It later tells he swam 75 yards. Safety precautions that were overlooked may have saved him had they used life jackets. Story in a nutshell, but it is a sad story. Condolences to the family of the victim.

The lead paragraph is perfectly clear...duh!

I don't know what the problem is, certainly seems clear to me! I don't understand the confusion.

My heart goes out to this family. Such a tragedy.

Who cares if it is clear. What a sad thing to have happened. My thoughts and prayers are with the family and friends.

God bless the family

Reminds me of all the things we did when I was a kid and feel a bit surprised that so many of us made it to adulthood. Accidents are terrible things, but on the other hand, the experience of trying new things adds great detail to the fabric of our lives. This young fellow is no longer suffering, but my heart goes out to the family that has to go on without him now.

if you are so exhausted you cant swim anymore, shouldnt you just roll over on your back and float until someone can help you??? There must be more to this then pure exhaustion.

So sorry for the families loss

Still disagree, poor lead paragraph. When speaking about multiple subjects that are male, it's not appropriate or sufficient to use only "he." Sorry that you guys feel offended, I'm just trying to help the reporter out.

Re: Anonymous @ 12:50 p.m.

Having almost drowned myself at age 14 I know what the experience is like.

While swimming at the Devil's Reservoir near Del Rio, Texas, I swam out to try and recover an inner tube. I was a pretty good swimmer but the distance exhausted me beyond my expectations. Although I made it out to the tube I just didn't have the strength to pull myself up on to it (my arms were like lead weights).

Suddenly, I started to cramp up and panic set in. (It's the panic that causes you do the make the wrong decisions.) I started going under and knew I was about to drown. For 20 seconds I was crying out for help but no one was near. A few seconds after that, I had accepted the fact that my life was over.

What saved me? The training I had at our local swimming pool. The life guards had taught us to do the dead man's float or the jelly fish float until we recovered enough strength to swim back.

My mind flashed back to that training and that's what saved my life.

"Still disagree, poor lead paragraph. When speaking about multiple subjects that are male, it's not appropriate or sufficient to use only "he.""

There was only one subject, and that was the man who drowned, Marcos Menjivar. The brother and his friend were not subjects of the sentence, but rather part of a explanatory phrase included within the sentence. Using "he" is completely appropriate, and using anything else would be redundant.

If the lead was confusing, it's because you weren't reading it properly. It makes perfect sense as written, and moreover, it's grammatically proper as well.