Report Spells Out Dramatic Prologue to Diving Deaths : Accident: Preliminary account tells how two adult divers tried to rescue boy.

Finally, strong ocean currents proved too much for the teen-age boy and adult diver who tried to cling together as they shared one source of air deep below the ocean’s surface. The boy drifted inexorably down, the diver floated upward, both unable to make contact, both suddenly without air.

The adult diver survived but the boy perished, along with his father, a master diver from Glendora, in the tragic July 2 accident off San Pedro.

A sheriff’s account released Thursday spelled out a dramatic scenario, suggesting that the very action intended to help the recreational diving expedition--freeing a snagged anchor line--instead let the line relax and drift with the currents, depriving divers of a direct path back to the surface.

In the last minutes of his life, Jeremiah Douglass, 14, was struggling to reach the surface by following the anchor line. The boy’s father, Darren Douglass, plunged downward after the boy. Rescuers found their bodies 145 feet below the surface on the sandy bottom, the father’s hand outstretched toward the son.

Douglass, 34, was a nationally known diver, author and managing editor of Dive Boat magazine.

The summary outlines initial findings of five investigating agencies including the Sheriff’s Department and the Coast Guard, said sheriff’s spokesman Sgt. Richard Dinsmoor. A final report is due in two months.

Douglass had led the outing to the wreck of a sunken World War I destroyer. Twelve divers joined the trip aboard the Atlantis, which anchored while some divers explored the wreck.

The anchor caught on the wreckage. Although the boat captain “advised that it would be necessary to cut the anchor line, which he was willing to do,” a majority of divers decided to stay, dive again and dislodge the anchor, the report said.

Darren Douglass began to ascend just before the anchor was freed, and the other divers followed, the summary states. “The [freed] anchor line, in the strong current, now presented a difficult, meandering and indirect route for the divers,” the summary said.

On the way back to the boat, diver Jeff Highley saw Jeremiah give the out-of-air sign. Highley said in an earlier interview that the youth seemed to be having “buoyancy problems.”

Highley shared his backup supply with the boy, who appeared unable to overcome the force pulling him downward. Jeremiah let go of the anchor line and sank, dropping the backup air supply, investigators found. Highley floated to the surface unconscious.

When Jeremiah failed to surface, his father “was observed swimming rapidly down the anchor line,” states the summary, which concludes that Darren Douglass died trying to save his son. But the line no longer offered a straight path to the boy.