Man dies after 40-foot jump off Huntington Beach Pier
A 44-year-old man died Sunday after jumping off the Huntington Beach Pier after a woman, according to officials.
The man surfers had pulled to shore was unresponsive, Jennifer Carey, a Huntington Beach city spokesperson, said Monday. Marine Safety and fire crews attempted to treat the man and transported him to Hoag Memorial Hospital Presbyterian in Newport Beach, where he was declared dead. The woman who jumped made it to shore uninjured.
The man was identified as Fenton Auston Dee III of Norwalk, the Orange County coroner’s office said. Carrie Braun, a spokeswoman for the Orange County Sheriff’s Department, said the coroner’s office planned to conduct an autopsy, including a toxicology report, on Dee’s body.
Carey said reports began coming in to the Police Department about 6:30 p.m. regarding two people who had jumped off the pier and into the ocean. When officers arrived at the scene, they found the 36-year-old woman who had jumped.
“We don’t believe there to be any foul play,” Carey said, “but we’re obviously going to talk to those who may have seen something.”
A witness to Sunday’s scene, Edmundo Alarcon of Hollywood, said he’d been on the pier to watch the sunset with a friend and was walking back from the end when he saw a woman standing on the outside of the structure’s railing, engaged in conversation with a man who appeared to be with her.
Arrests have been made in connection with the burglaries in the Huntington Harbour area and charges have been filed, a city spokesperson said.
“It looked like she just wanted to jump for fun, like she wanted to do it and then she didn’t,” Alarcon said Monday, adding that at one point, the woman was hanging on to the pier by one arm. “You can tell he didn’t want to [jump]. I don’t know if he was trying to stop her.”
Given the reported tidal conditions at the time of the incident, Huntington Beach Marine Safety Division Chief Eric Dieterman estimated it was more than a 40-foot drop from the pier to the water for the jumpers.
“The ocean conditions are constantly changing based on tides, surf conditions and time of the year,” Dieterman said in a statement. “Due to these changing conditions, and the 40- to 45-foot pier height, pier jumping is prohibited.”
Alarcon confirmed Monday that the waves were strong and said he was worried that the woman who jumped might be tossed upon the pylons of the pier. When she appeared to be fine, people on the pier began to cheer. That’s when the man jumped in, he said.
“It had looked like she was struggling at first, so I think he just made a decision he was going to help her,” Alarcon said. “It looked like they both got to the surfers together and they were OK — something must have happened between then and their reaching the shore.”
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