You are here: Home > Mumbai > 'Why were there no lifeguards?'

Was seen screaming for help in the freezing waters of the lake

As brilliant Harvard architect, a Bandra boy, drowns in Chicago lake, anguished family and a sole eyewitness ask...

RIP, Zhya:  His family will always wonder how a casual stroll ended in death. The architect is also theatre personality, Dolly Thakore's nephew

On the morning of November 11, Zhya David Jacobs (34), returned home to Gordon Terrace in the Lincoln Park Area of Chicago. He had spent the night working on a design project for his company, Adrian Smith and Gordon Gill Architecture and he was fatigued.

After brunch at 12.30 pm, he went out for a stroll near Lake Michigan.
A few hours later, his body was fished out of the freezing lake.  The last person to see Zhya alive was a jogger, Tom Holland, who heard him screaming for help, deep within the waters of the lake (pictured alongside).

Holland wrote a blog on the website Chicago Uptown Neighbourhood the next day. It speaks of his anguish over Zhya's death...

"I am sad to say that I was the jogger that called the fire department yesterday. I feel terrible for Mr Jacob's family. He appeared to have fallen into the lake somewhere near the harbour and the golf course. By the time the fire department arrived the current had pulled him out into the lake. He couldn't have been in the water much more than 10 minutes.

If there had been any life preservers in the area, he certainly could have been saved. This is not the first person to drown in Montrose harbour this year. Why on earth aren't there life preservers available? Why?"
Zhya, a Bandra-born architect, incidentally, is theatre artiste, Dolly Thakore's nephew (Zhya's mother is Thakore's younger sister).

Said Thakore, "My son Quasar and Zhya's parents, [Dennis and Esmie Jacobs] flew to Chicago soon after the Chicago police called them. We were told that a Chicago fire department dive unit got Zhya out of the water, 40 minutes later. He was taken to Weiss Memorial Hospital, five minutes away, where he was declared dead." Thakore said that forensic experts at Weiss Memorial have concluded that it was a case of case of accidental death due to drowning.

Said Quasar, "The temperature was -2 degree Centigrade and it was raining that afternoon. He spoke to his parents a day before and was looking forward to coming home for Christmas."

Zhya's parents have turned to religion in their time of grief. They said, "His character reflected the Jesus he worshipped. His passion for his God was contagious, his zeal for the Lord was a consuming fire."
Zhya will be laid to rest at St Stephen's Church, Bandra (W) this afternoon.

Bright light goes out
- Zhya did his... Masters in Design Studies, Harvard University, 2007.
- Masters in Arch, Georgia Institute of Technology, 2005.
- Digital design, University of California at Berkeley, August 1997.
- B Arch from Mumbai, 1997.
- He has also worked on several projects in Mumbai, Pune, Jharkhand and overseas in London, Berkeley,Georgia, Atlanta and at Harvard.
- He was faculty lecturer at Yale University and a Teaching assistant at Harvard University during the same period.

For Zhya's architectural work log on to  http://www.zhyaonline.com
Also read, Belmont Area mourns Zhya's death. Read the blogs http://www.uptownupdate.com