On a summer afternoon nine years ago, Mark Raymond Jr dove into Lake Pontchartrain in the US state of Louisiana.
He had not realised how shallow it was – and felt his forehead hit the lake bottom. Three weeks later, he woke up from a medically induced coma, unable to use his legs or hands.
Diving accidents are life-shattering – but not uncommon. They disproportionately affect young men: up to 97 per cent of diving-induced spinal cord injuries occur in males, and most are aged 15 to 29 years.
“Anybody’s life can change in a split second like mine did,” says Raymond, who went on to found the Split Second Foundation in New Orleans and is its chief executive.
He was fortunate that his friends that day performed CPR and saved his life. He was in his mid-twenties at the time. Since then, he has become an energetic campaigner for spinal cord injury and, in particular, the dangers of diving into shallow water.
“I wasn’t paying attention to the tide. What I thought was deeper water was not. [I] dove off the boat and hit my head on the sandy bottom, and I shattered the fifth vertebra in my neck, resulting in paralysis,” he writes on his website.