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Man's Drowning Death Linked To Rapture Predictions

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Photo by delara-photos via the LAist Featured Photos pool on Flickr

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A man drowned after attempting to swim across a reservoir in Northern California based on the belief that God was on the other side, reports CBS News. 25-year-old Victor Frasno, a resident of Florida, apparently tried to cross the lake despite the fact that he could not swim. According to CBS, Frasno's decision was likely based on predictions of the rapture made by Harold Camping. He was "clutching a bible and flailing," they report, after trying to get his brother to make the trek across the reservoir with him. CBS reports:

According to park police, Frasno jumped in the water twice after returning to the park with his brother and sister-in-law that evening. He apparently insisted that he and his brother were chosen to speak to God and pulled his brother into the water the second time.

His body was retrieved shortly after the time that the rapture was predicted to begin.

Frasno's is not the first death reported in connection to Camping's preaching. In Russia, a teenage girl reportedly hung herself after keeping what she called a "death diary," reports FOX. Her behavior had changed dramatically since hearing Camping's predictions, and in the last entry of her diary she wrote:

"We are not righteous people, only they will go to heaven, the others will stay here on Earth to go through terrible sufferings," the girl, whose name has not been revealed, wrote...Her last entry said, "I don't want to die like the others. That's why I'll die now."

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