Last April, Avishek Sengupta was participating in the Mid-Atlantic Tough Mudder when he drowned in the water at the Walk the Plank obstacle. The platform competitors had to jump from was 15 feet tall, and the man-made pool below was about 40 feet wide and 15 feet deep. After Sengupta made the jump, no one realized he failed to come back to the surface. Although the exact reason behind his drowning is still unknown, he wasn’t spotted until more than eight minutes later when his body came to the surface and a rescue diver finally saw him.

The 28-year-old’s death sparked a great amount of criticism for the challenging endurance race that puts competitors in contact with barbed and electrical wires throughout the course. Sengupta’s mother filed a lawsuit against the company but after five months of failed mediation, the two sides have not been able to reach a settlement. Airsquid Ventures is a co-defendant of Tough Mudder, as it’s the company whose subsidiary was in charge of aquatic safety at the event.

According to Outside, the wrongful death complaint was filed by the Boston firm of Gilbert and Renton and charges Tough Mudder and Airsquid Ventures with gross negligence for how the Walk the Plank obstacle course was operated that day. The complaint states that both companies are directly responsible for how overcrowded the obstacle was, making it impossible for all safety measures to be properly taken. It also states that Tough Mudder intentionally lessened the safety requirements in order to decrease the crowd.

“Amphibious Medics—the subsidiary of Airsquid Ventures contracted to manage aquatic safety at ‘Walk the Plank’ on the day Sengupta drowned—comes under fire for staffing the pool with lifeguards who were unable to assist in the search for Sengupta’s body because they wore lifejackets that prevented them from diving. The same lifeguards also challenged Sengupta’s teammates when they pleaded that he was missing underwater, wasting precious moments and clearly violating industry-standard lifeguarding protocol, which demands that any credible report of a drowning trigger an immediate and organized search,” Outside reported.

The video below shows footage from the event and the rescue effort that left Sengupta underwater for more than eight minutes.

Image from Tough Mudder LLC on Wikimedia Commons