Elsie John buried her 30-year-old son Jason in Austin, the city he breathed and loved and where he died on the night of 5 February. He is among four people who have been discovered drowned in Lady Bird Lake just this year — all of them male, young and said to have died by a “combination of alcohol and easy access” to the water.
“We only buried him in Austin because he loved Austin,” Ms John, who raised her son in New York, tells The Independent. “Jason only lived in Austin for two years and the reason why we left him there is because when he left the bar [on the night he died], he said, ‘Oh, I love Austin. I never want to leave Austin.’”
