A day after a Queens sushi chef drowned at a Rye Playland lake where there were no warnings against swimming, Westchester officials yesterday announced they’ll install “more difficult to vandalize” signs at the off-limits waters.
When Won Yong Kim, 43, of Flushing, waded fully clothed into Playland Lake – a spot for kayaking and paddle boats – on the Fourth of July, there were no signs posted banning swimming because vandals had ripped them down, cops said.
Yesterday, 20 temporary signs went up until permanent metal posts “steeped in cement with the international symbol of no swimming” are ready, said Susan Tolchin, chief adviser to the Westchester County executive.
Fencing is not an option, because the lake at the county-owned park is “huge,” and it’s clear the water is not for swimming, she said.
“It’s not a beach. It’s rocks. There’s boulders. There’s no easy access to the water,” she said.
Kim, a devoted dad who was a sushi chef at an Upper East Side restaurant, was at the picnic area adjacent to the lake with several people, including his wife and their 5-year-old son.
He and a female family friend went into the water, but she turned back “because the rocks hurt her feet,” said Westchester County Public Safety Deputy Commissioner Monte Long.
“She went back and suggested to him he should go back, and he declined,” he said. “From talking to witnesses and members of his party, he had been consuming alcohol prior to entering the water.”
“I don’t think he was drunk-drunk, you know. Maybe just a couple of beers with his friends,” Kenny Kim said yesterday of his brother as the heartbroken family made funeral arrangements.
His sister-in-law, Song Ki Kim, 41, had taken the couple’s son, William, to play games, and rushed over when she saw the ambulance, Kenny Kim said.
“When he came out of the water, he spoke. He said, ‘What’s going on?’ and then they put him inside the ambulance. He was alive,” Kim’s brother said.