Tourist Sucked Into Deadly Maui Blowhole

Californian David Potts bobs up once, vanishes
By Mary Papenfuss,  Newser Staff
Posted Jul 15, 2011 1:54 AM CDT
Tourist Sucked Into Deadly Maui Blowhole
A tourist snapped this picture just minutes before David Potts (believed standing near the spray upper right) was sucked to his death at Nakalele Point in Maui.   (AP Photo/Rocco Piganelli)

Horrified onlookers watched helplessly as a Northern California man was sucked into a tourist-touted "blowhole" on the shores of Maui. David Potts was clowning around close to the geyser-like phenomenon when a sneaker wave knocked him off his feet and he disappeared down the spouting hole. He bobbed to the surface once, then vanished underground. "We all stared for like 30 seconds, and then I realized—he's gone," said a witness. "I felt like I was going to throw up." Maui police have called off a search for the body, AP reports. (More blowhole stories.)

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