The Hallandale Beach, Fla., lifeguard who got fired after saving a man outside his coverage zone may get his job back, said the private contractor that employed him.
But lifeguard Tomas Lopez, 21, told ABC News that he would not go back to work, even if he could.
“Now that [the firing] is public, they want to fix it. That’s shady to me,” Lopez said. “If I never said anything, they never would have acted.”
Lopez said he had only been working as a lifeguard for four months at Hallandale Beach prior to being fired. He drove about 24 miles from his home in Davie, Fla., to Hallandale Beach, and worked nearly five days a week almost every week since he was hired, he said.
This is the second rescue Lopez performed as a lifeguard.
Jeff Ellis, the president of Jeff Ellis Management, told ABC News he would be conducting a full investigation into the firing of Lopez, who attempted to save a drowning man who was 1,500 feet away from the area of the public beach that the contractor patrols. Lifeguards had strict instructions not to venture outside the patrol zone.
Six other Hallandale lifeguards left the job after they told supervisors who work for the contractor that they too would have rescued the man.
Lopez said that no one from Jeff Ellis Management has contacted him yet regarding the investigation.
“There was someone who was fired before me for saying he wouldn’t obey the rule,” said Lopez, of Jeff Ellis Management’s policy of only patrolling zones it’s paid to cover. “Now that they’re in trouble, they want to fix it.”
Ellis, speaking from Houston, said that if he thinks the company acted in error, he may offer to reinstate Lopez, should he decide to come back. He said he would extend an invitation to any of the lifeguards who resigned to return to work, adding that they were not fired.
“This event caught me by surprise just as much as it did everyone else,” said Ellis. “We’re reviewing everything that has occurred, and we will either concur with that or we will override what happened based on what we find out.”
Ellis said that he received conflicting accounts of what occurred on Monday afternoon when Lopez left his chair to save a man down the beach who appeared to be drowning.
“If he left his chair and we had a beach full of people and they were left unprotected, that would be one thing,” he said. “If he left his beach and another guard immediately took over and covered so that the beach was protected, that would be an entirely different thing.”
Ellis said he was made aware of the incident on Tuesday afternoon. He was not in the Fort Lauderdale area at the time.
He said he plans to return to Fort Lauderdale on Friday to speak with the people who quit as a result of Lopez’ firing, as well as Lopez himself.
“Once we get all of [the information], we can make an assessment to determine whether or not we acted appropriately,” Ellis said.
Hallandale Beach spokesperson Peter Dobens said the city asked Jeff Ellis Management to conduct the investigation to get an account of what happened.
City Manager Renee Crichton said, “We do not have all the facts in this case. We take the safety to all visitors to our beaches very seriously. Whether they are in a protected area or unprotected area, we believe aid must be rendered.”
Dobens said Jeff Ellis Management has been employed by the city since 2003.
The city renewed the company’s contract in 2009, said Dobens. It will expire on September 30, 2012.
“I’m told the city was planning on going out for bids on [a new contractor] to see if we can get a better deal,” Dobens said.
Dobens said Hallandale Beach pays around $339,000 a year to Jeff Ellis Management to cover the city’s two beaches and its municipal pool.
“Right now [Elllis] is doing the investigation, and we’re hoping to get results fairly soon to examine what happened,” Dobens said. “Nothing like this has happened before in Hallandale Beach.”
With reporting by MATT GUTMAN and KATIE MOISSE and CANDACE SMITH.
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