Police believe an 11-year-old Bolingbrook, Ill. girl who drowned in a retention pond behind her elementary school Tuesday jumped off a bridge after being dared by classmates.
Witnesses remember hearing Jordan Oliver tell her friends she couldn't swimbefore jumping off the bridge behind Pioneer Elementary School, where Oliver was in fifth grade, according to WGN.
According to Bolingbrook police, Oliver and a group of six other boys and girls said they were going "bridge jumping" Tuesday and climbed over the side rails of the bridge at a pond at Indian Chase Meadows, the Chicago Sun-Times reports. Oliver jumped twice: the first time she was able to swim to shore, but the second time witnesses saw her resurface, then sink into the 12-foot-deep water.
Police and fire crews arrived at the pond at about 5:36 p.m. Tuesday, and found the girl about an hour later, Bolingbrook police Lt. Mike Rompa told the Daily Herald. She was taken to Adventist Bolingbrook Hospital, where she was pronounced dead.
Grief counselors were on hand at the 800-student elementary school Wednesday morning, where school officials say they are trying to make the environment as normal as possible, ABC Chicago reports. Administrators described Oliver as a popular student who loved the school and got along with classmates.
“She was an angel,” Jackie Malonga, Oliver's next door neighbor, told the Chicago Tribune. “Everyone in the neighborhood loved her. We are all in a state of shock right now.”
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