Fishermen see body floating in Uvas and call authorities;
identity of man remains unknown
Uvas Reservoir – A man was found floating face down in Uvas Reservoir Wednesday afternoon by two men in a boat who were fishing the reservoir.
The man’s identity was not known by press time Wednesday.
David Shepherd of King City called 911 shortly after 1pm, sending fire, paramedics and Santa Clara County Sheriff’s deputies to the boat ramp parking lot. Deputies and park rangers asked the few visitors in the boat ramp area to leave, then closed off the ramp parking lot to the public.
A cowboy hat, jeans and a shirt were lying in a pile with beer cans scattered around the clothing on the shore about 20 feet from the body.
The man was wearing blue shorts, which could have been swimming trunks. He may have been in the water for two or three days, according to Serg Palanov, with the Sheriff’s Office.
“It is apparent by the state the body’s in that he’s been in there for a while,” Palanov said.
Shepherd and Sean Daley, of Salinas, came to Uvas to do a little fishing, they said. They put the boat in about 9am and steered to the right around a small outcropping of the shoreline.
“As we rounded that corner, we saw some clothes on the bank there and a bunch of beer cans,” Shepherd said. “We kind of joked about it. We fished all day and decided to head back. The clothes were still there when we came back, so we went closer to look, and that’s when we saw him.”
Shepherd said the man was wearing blue shorts, which Palanov confirmed, and was floating on the surface of the water.
“You could tell (he was dead), and I called 911,” he said.
Marcelo Diaz, of Gilroy, was in the boat behind Shepherd and Daley following them in to the ramp, Diaz said.
“Yeah, I saw him, too, just floating there,” he said. “I saw the clothes, the cans; maybe he just sat there drinking, decided to swim and just fell in, or was too drunk to swim.”
Palanov said, as he waited for the coroner to arrive on the scene, the man was white, but he could not give an approximate age for the man.
A spokesperson for the coroner’s office said late Wednesday afternoon there was no information about the man as the coroner had not yet returned to the office from the scene.
A car – an older model Toyota Corolla hatchback – in the parking lot was thought to belong to the victim, Palanov said, because it had been in the lot at the ramp for the same length of time the body appeared to have been in the water.
The link between the empty beer cans and the man’s death is speculative, Palanov said, but seems likely.
“This is why we discourage people from mixing alcohol and water sports,” he said. “This is also why there is no swimming in the reservoir; there are no lifeguards here to pull you out if you get into trouble.”
