Sounds like she was out partying and got too wasted. Is this anyone's fault but hers? I think not. Tragic, yes, but shouldn't people take responsibility for their own actions?
Here is the article:
Feb 21 2011, New York — The parents of a woman who died during a polar bear club event in New Jersey filed a massive lawsuit blaming 19 people for her mysterious death. The body of Tracy Hottenstein, 35, of Conshohocken, Penn., was found floating in Sea Isle City bay in February 2009 during the weekend of the town's Polar Bear Plunge, when hundreds of swimmers take a dip in the icy Atlantic to raise money for charity. Hottenstein didn't actually participate in the swim, but had come to the Jersey Shore party town to join the raucous festivities that surround the event. According to a medical examiner's report, she died of hypothermia and acute alcohol intoxication. She also had several broken ribs, leading authorities to believe that she had fallen off a dock during a moonlight stroll after a night of heavy drinking. Authorities said temperatures were below freezing the night she died. Hottenstein had been boozing in at least two bars that night and was captured on surveillance cameras leaving the last one after 2 a.m. on Feb. 15, local police said. Now, her parents are holding just about everyone she came in contact with that weekend accountable for her death, including a couple who had her over for dinner the night she died. Among those named in the lawsuit are: Sea Isle City The city's police department, as well as several officers The hospital where she died The doctor who pronounced her dead The owners of the two bars she was at on the night she died The Polar Bear organization "The city commissioners knew that public drunkenness and public alcohol consumption, both violations of city ordinances, occurred at Polar Bear Plunge events," Hottenstein's parents, Charlie and Betty, said in the lawsuit. "The Polar Bear Plunge is a state-created danger ... for encouraging people to expose themselves to frigid air and water, risking hypothermia." The Hottensteins have attended several Sea Isle City council meetings to complain about what they said was the town's choice to ignore the excessive partying that accompanies the event. "We just don't see the city doing anything to clean up the bars that may be over-serving or enforcing its own ordinances on public intoxication," Charlie Hottenstein told the Cape May County Herald. He said the couple attended last year's plunge and were shocked by the "constant flow of people staggering around drunk." "If last year's event was an indication of what they think, they sure don't want to miss out on the cash flow," Charlie Hottenstein told the paper. "They got those plows out and piled big monster piles of snow up right where our daughter was found dead. This year's plunge is slated for Feb. 19 and Police Chief Thomas D'Intino said in a statement that the Coast Guard, state and county police would be on hand to assist the city's beach patrol. Hottenstein's friends are trying to get a small memorial built to remember her and plan on dedicating a stone near the marina before the event. "It's also where she took her last breath," Holly Judge, one of Hottenstein's oldest friends, told the Herald.