Mike Celizic

The death of Marquise Hill is the definition of a senseless tragedy. He was a young man with a lot to live for, the local boy who made good in the NFL, the giving person who came back to New Orleans to help his family rebuild homes destroyed by Hurricane Katrina.

And he’s dead because he was too big and too strong and too good a swimmer to need a life jacket.

He died Saturday night. His body was found Sunday. His last act apparently was to help save the life of the woman with whom he was having a great holiday evening jet skiing on Lake Pontchartrain.

And this is the senseless part. The Herald reported that the woman either couldn’t swim or was a poor swimmer. Yet she climbed on a jet ski behind Hill without a life jacket. This is like climbing into a car and not fastening the seat belt or riding a motorcycle without a helmet.

Hill wasn’t wearing a life jacket either. The reports said he could swim well, but he and his companion were thrown off their jet ski when they hit a wave. They fell into water that was running with a strong current. Some reports said there was also an undertow. However well Hill could swim, he wasn’t strong enough to get back to his friend. But he was able to talk to her, keeping her calm and helping her to drift into either a buoy or a piling that she was able to cling to until rescuers found her. But they didn’t find Hill until the next day, and by then it was far too late.

By all accounts, he was a good guy. The fact he spent his time helping rebuild homes destroyed by Katrina speaks to that.

“It’s just like him to put someone else’s life in front of his own. That’s the way he always was,” his agent, Albert Elias, told the Herald.

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That’s true, but he also put his and his friend’s lives in jeopardy when he decided to go out on a 630-square-mile lake without personal flotation devices. He certainly didn’t think that’s what he was doing, or he wouldn’t have done it. He undoubtedly thought there wasn’t any danger.

After all, who falls off a jet ski? Anyway, if he did, he could swim back to it.

But he didn’t reckon on the current and undertow. That was his second mistake — not knowing the water he was navigating in. It’s a mistake no one should make on the water.

What happened to Hill is a freak accident. He’d probably been out on the lake before and never had any trouble. But it didn’t have to happen.

He was an athlete and a good one. In high school, he had been rated as the top defensive line prospect in the country by some services. Young men in general feel nothing can harm them, and athletes epitomize that attitude.

When you can bench press 400 or 500 pounds, you tend to think you’re bulletproof.