A former Ship Bottom lifeguard and a critical care nurse were among a group of six friends having a nighttime picnic at the bay beach Friday when the sound of children playing nearby turned eerily quiet.
“We knew there were children playing in the water,” Kenyatta Swift said, adding the silence about 35 minutes later didn’t match the din of children at play just moments earlier in Manahawkin Bay, shortly before 8 p.m. Sept. 5. “I had a gut feeling.”
Swift, who was a lifeguard until 2017 in the borough and had guarded the bay beach many times before, stood up and…
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