Meshach Massally graduated from the 8th grade at Deep Creek Middle School in Essex exactly one week ago, but the 14-year-old will never get a chance to go to high school.
"I am emotional right now because I watched my son die,” said Meshach’s Mother, Theresa Massally.
Loved ones, friends and neighbors have been gathering around the family to support them through the pain.
Meshach passed away Tuesday morning after he was discovered unconscious on the bottom of a pool the night before.
"He probably was calling out to his mom, his dad, his brothers, and then he was thinking about us in his last moments, and I was so close,” Francis Massally, Meshach’s brother, said.
Baltimore County Police are calling the drowning an accident.
Meshach left home to hang out with a group of friends Monday night, and they ended up trespassing at the Harbor Point Estates Community Pool less than a mile away.
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“Some of the kids had gotten into the pool and some of the kids were throwing furniture in the pool,” said Baltimore County Police Cpl. John Wachter. “We have some reports of kids pushing each other into the pool but there's nothing to indicate that he was actually pushed into the pool."
Meshach didn't know how to swim, but family members said he made sure people knew that.
Investigators say Meshach kept to the shallow end, but at one point, his buddies lost track of him. Telling Meshach's brother, Immanuel, he had already gone home.
"Then at 9PM a boy named Lamont came running to me and said ‘your brother's drowning, he's not breathing,’” Immanuel said. “I rode my bike as fast as I can to the pool, and when I see Meshach, he was just lying there, he wasn't moving."
He called 911, and then his parents.
Meshach was initially taken to MedStar Franklin Square Hospital, and then was transferred to Johns Hopkins. He passed away Tuesday morning.
The family doesn't understand how Meshach ended up at the bottom of the eight-and-a-half foot deep end without anyone seeing him.
"Meshach was a wonderful, wonderful young man," Theresa said.
The Massallys moved to the states from Liberia when Theresa was pregnant with Meshach. They say the 14-year-old loved playing football and videogames and he was active at his church. He was basically inseparable from Immanuel; the teens are just one year apart.
A GoFundMe page has been set up to help the family.
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