SAN JOSE – A family fishing trip ended in tragedy Tuesday
afternoon as 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 as 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 approximately knee-deep water when they encountered a slippery spot on the silt-covered creekbed at about 1:30 p.m.
Their father, John McCarthy, 46, and two friends, Norma Mantez, 22, and her fiance, 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.
McCarthy and Mantez were able to reach the children and push them to shore. The man on shore pulled the children out of the water to safety.
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. Both were fully clothed. McCarthy was wearing boots.
San Jose Fire Department’s swift water rescue team and Sheriffs Office divers recovered the woman’s body at 3:30 p.m. and the man’s about an hour later from the murky water.
Lt. Dale Unger, the Sheriff’s Department’s underwater search unit commander, said clothing was a major factor for why the adults went under.
“It was defiantly 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 bodies were recovered in 10-15 feet of water.
Mantez was found 28 feet from shore while McCarthy was recovered 84 feet from shore, Unger said.
“I’m very proud of my divers,” Unger said.
The children, who were uninjured, were picked up by their mother after she was notified of the tragedy.
