On Wednesday, a San Diego surfer spotted a human torso in the surf. The discovery led to a search that eventually recovered the still-unidentified man’s remains.
Lifeguards were called out to Ocean Beach multiple times that day by beachgoers who encountered the body, as NBC 7 San Diego reports. At 7:30 a.m., a surfer reported seeing a torso in the surf near the Ocean Beach Pier and alerted authorities, which kicked off a joint search effort by lifeguards, fire-rescue crews, paramedics and police. However, that initial effort was called off at 8:45 a.m., after which the search was turned over to dive teams using sonar.
Lifeguards were called out for the second time later that afternoon, when the body washed ashore. ABC 10 News reports the remains were discovered by a beachgoer named Andrew (no last name was provided) and his son, as they were running along the sand.“We did a little sprint on the beach and then he stopped a little short of where we were going to,” Andrew told ABC. “And so we got a little closer to it to check it out and I realized it wasn’t a bird, it was a body.”
The deceased man’s identity has still not been determined. However, the incident happened near where kayaker Danny Marron went missing on Friday. Marron’s last known location was south of Mission Bay, just before 2:00 p.m.. His outrigger kayak, broken in half, washed up near Mission Beach later that day. The Coast Guard eventually decided to suspend their search, due to environmental factors and the dwindling probability of Marron’s survival.
