SAN JOSE – A family fishing trip ended in tragedy Tuesday
afternoon when the father of two children and a family friend
drowned while trying to save the youngsters at Coyote Creek at
Parkway Lakes north of Metcalf Road.
SAN JOSE – A family fishing trip ended in tragedy Tuesday afternoon when the father of two children and a family friend drowned while trying to save the youngsters at Coyote Creek at Parkway Lakes north of Metcalf Road.
The youngsters, a 12-year-old boy and a 9-year-old girl, were playing in the knee-deep water when they encountered a slippery spot on the silt-covered creekbed at about 1:30 p.m., and fell into the creek.
Their father, John McCarthy, 46, and friends, Norma Mantez, 22, and her fiancé, were fishing on the banks of the creek in south San Jose just west of U.S. 101, said San Jose Police Department Public Information Officer Gina Tepoorten.
McCarthy and Mantez jumped into the slow-moving stream to save the children. The two adults never came out of the water.
They were all San Jose residents.
Current from Coyote Creek, although only several feet deep, apparently dragged the children southward toward the fishing lake, Tepoorten said, prompting the father and his friend help the children.
McCarthy and Mantez were able to reach the children and push them to shore, where the woman’s fiancé pulled the children safely out of the water.
While the children were saved, the current was too strong for the two adults to stop themselves from being taken under and swept into the lake, Tepoorten said.
“The adults were seen going into the water and weren’t seen after that,” Tepoorten reported.
Tepoorten said both adults could swim, although Mantez was not a strong swimmer.
San Jose Fire Department’s swift water rescue team and Sheriffs Office divers recovered the woman’s body at 3:30 p.m. about 28 feet from shore in 10 to 15 feet of water. McCarthy’s body was found an hour later about 84 feet from shore, also in 10 to 15 feet of water, said Lt. Dale Unger, the Sheriff Department’s underwater search unit commander.
Unger said both McCarthy and Mantez were fully clothed. McCarthy was wearing boots.
“It was … a significant factor,” Unger said. “It just acts like weights in the water.”
The other major factor was the silt on the bottom of the creek bed, Unger said. The children, although in shallow water, had hit a slippery patch and were initially swept away.
Divers had to work through black-out conditions while searching for the bodies.
The children, who were uninjured, were picked up by their mother after she was notified of the tragedy.
