On Friday, September 30th, 2011 at 1921 hours 911 caller mentioned the following: ** A boat flooded on the shore. ** A man is in the water and does not have a life jacket.  Sergeant advised me to search on the water and informed me he would respond to the scene via land.  At 1945 hours 911 caller2 mentioned the following:  ** The male subject has been in the water approx 20 minutes. ** The boat is on shore and swamped.  ** The father had fallen overboard with no life-jacket.  ** Both his sneakers are on the beach.  At 1947 hours the additional information was relayed to the dispatcher: ** Victim is 53 or 54 years old, no health problems.  ** He is wearing blue jeans and a blue shirt.  ** Has been in the water for about 30 min.  

At 2030 hours Officer informed me the location of where the victim was seen last.  I marked it on my Verizon GPS as: N33DEG,40MIN,15SEC. W111DEG,05MIN,36SEC.  I searched for the victim for over two hours.  At 2230 hours I obtained permission to discontinue my search via patrol boat.  On 10-01-2011 at 0530 hours I resumed duty.  Sergeant advised me to provide Dive Team security via patrol boat while they searched for the drowned victim near the Coyote boat-ramp.  At 1455 hours Sergeant advised the victim had been found by divers.  After the divers cleared, Sergeant directed me to the location where the victim was found.  I provided GPS coordinates: N33DEG,40MIN,15SEC.  W111DEG,05MIN,38SEC  

At 1600 hours I discontinued my security detail on the water.  On 10-03-2011son submitted a typed statement of the incident and included some of the following information in his statement:  ** Started the fishing trip on water at 5:15 pm in the bass boat.  ** Heading toward the bridge the winds start picking up and the water started to get rough.  ** Father was bailing out water, a wave hit the boat.  ** Son went overboard along with his back pack and life jacket.  ** son noticed boat was gone and his dad (Father) was in the water struggling to stay afloat.  ** Son swam over to his dad and grabbed him and gave him a book bag (contained sweat pants, sweat shirt and two loaded pistols) so that he could float.  ** Son was holding onto his life jacket with his left hand and he grabbed his dad with his right hand and told him to lay on his back.  ** Son screamed for (boat operator) to come get them.  ** Operator told him he can''t come back to get them and that they need to swim and not panic.  ** Son  told his father to kick off his shoes.  ** Son  told his dad to kick his legs but he did not.  ** Son  mentioned he forgot to tell him to take off his jeans and that  weighed him down.  ** The waves kept coming, they went under twice.  ** Son brought his dad back up from under the water.  ** Son told his dad to stop grabbing him because they kept going under the water.  ** The third time they went under and after they came up he told his dad that he had to swim and Son started swimming back to the shore.  Father was not seen again.  Son mentioned the boat operator did not try to render aid.

Roosevelt, AZ                 