MACON — The parents of a 14-year-old boy who died when a cinder-block partition in a locker room at a Robins Air Force Base swimming pool facility collapsed last week are seeking answers about the incident.
A lawyer for the family of Gabriel Lee Stone said on Tuesday that the boy was killed July 22 when the partition, said to be at least 8 feet tall and inside the men’s locker room at the base’s Heritage Club Pool, gave way after a couple of other youths climbed on it.
The lawyer, Roderick E. Edmond, of Atlanta, said one of Stone’s brothers, 17, scaled the wall to retrieve a personal item that had fallen into a hole in the blocks atop the wall on a prior visit. Then another boy climbed on the wall.
“When that kid was up there, the wall started shaking and started shifting,” Edmond said. “And this kid jumped down.”
Gabriel Stone, with both hands, began trying to stabilize the partition. His older brother did likewise, Edmond said, but they couldn’t hold it in place. The blocks tumbled on top of the 14-year-old. Three other youths in the locker room were hurt.
Stone’s father, Camalle Stone, a former Marine who was also at the pool, learned of the collapse and began pulling the blocks off Gabriel Stone. The teenager soon stopped breathing and was later pronounced dead at a hospital, Edmond said.
He had been set to begin classes this week at Northside High School, a few blocks from where he lived in Warner Robins.
Base officials said their investigation was “ongoing” and that details would be released upon its completion. The pool, on Ninth Street, lies about a mile and a half south of the base runway.
Edmond said the Stone family is trying to learn more about why the wall was unstable and plans to pursue legal action. As of Tuesday afternoon, no lawsuit had been filed.
“The obvious questions,” Edmond said, “are this: When was the facility constructed? When it was constructed, was it constructed appropriately? Was it properly inspected?”
He said base officials have assured Edmond that the accident site will be preserved “so that at the appropriate time we can get our own independent structural engineer over there to answer a number of these questions.”
Among them, he added, “What the hell happened?”
Camalle Stone, once stationed at the Pentagon, told reporters gathered at a Macon law office that, as a father, he was “pouring everything” into his son.
“I spent every summer trying to get him to be the best man that he could be,” he said of his son, “talking to him all the time — both my boys — about God, about community, about family, about being loyal, about being honest. One of the things that I love about him was that he had an honest heart.”
His funeral is set for Saturday in Cordele.
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