Suspect Flees Into Surf, Drowns : Crime: Officer swims to rescue him. But, ignoring entreaties to return, the man slips beneath the waves. A cap links him to an apartment burglary.

A prowler fleeing from police ran into the surf off the Ventura Promenade, vanished beneath the waves before dawn Thursday and drowned before a swimming officer could reach him, police said.

About 4 p.m. Thursday, a team of six divers found what they believed to be the man’s body, its clothing snagged on a piling of the Ventura Pier about 10 feet down in the 61-degree water, authorities said.

The unidentified man was about 30, and had curly blond hair, Detective John Leach said.

He was believed to have burglarized a 12-unit apartment complex in Ventura about 10:30 p.m. Wednesday Leach said. At 3:12 a.m. Thursday, a prowler was reported in the parking structure at the Country Inn on South Chestnut Street, across the street from the apartment complex.

Officer Ray Vance, who responded to the prowler call, demanded the man halt and gave chase when the suspect ran across the California Street overpass, beyond the Holiday Inn, across the Promenade and onto the sand, police said.

There, the man threw his cap onto the beach, rushed into the surf and swam into the darkness, ignoring the entreaties of gathering officers to return to shore.

Officer Chris Davis swam after him but could not reach him before he slid under the water about 50 yards from shore and about 30 to 40 yards west of the pier.

Not long after dawn broke, authorities called off a fruitless search involving a Coast Guard helicopter and two law-enforcement vessels.

Leach said the body recovered Thursday afternoon closely resembles the description given by officers and the burglary victim.

The discovery of a Mighty Ducks cap on the beach was one clue.

Cecelia Geertsen, 55, night manager at the apartment complex, said a tenant saw a man fitting the suspect’s description huddled in the passageway outside her back door Wednesday night. She later found that some electronic equipment and the tenant’s Mighty Ducks cap had been stolen, Geertsen said.

Sheriff’s Sgt. Earl Matthews, whose search-and-rescue dive team recovered the body, said the man’s clothing might have weighted him down. The body, its clothing caught on some mussels on the pier supports, was clad in an olive-green sweat shirt and tan pants.

Police, noting the man ran about a quarter mile before entering the sea, speculated that fatigue might have made him vulnerable to hypothermia in the cold water.

An autopsy was scheduled for today, authorities said.

Times correspondent Ira E. Stoll contributed to this report.