Investigation of 3 Reported Drownings Yields Only Mystery

Confronted with solid evidence, but unable to find any bodies, Riverside County sheriff’s investigators are stumped by a young man’s report that three new friends fell out of a kayak and drowned in murky Lake Elsinore over the weekend.

By Monday morning, a dive team had suspended its search of the lake bottom. And the man’s statements had turned the southwest Riverside County town of 26,000 into a community of amateur detectives, all with their own theory about what happened.

“We don’t have anything to lead us to believe that he’s lying to us,” said Riverside County Sheriff’s Sgt. Mark Lohman. “But the big mystery to us is what happened to the other three. Were they able to swim to another part of the shore, and did they just go home? Or are they still in the lake?”

Early Sunday, 18-year-old Clay Haertel swam to the shore of Lake Elsinore, the 3,300-acre lake west of Interstate 15, near the Orange County line, and the largest natural freshwater lake in Southern California.

Haertel called sheriff’s investigators and told them that he had met three other teenagers about 2 a.m. Sunday. The four--Haertel, another man and two women--were at a party near the lake, and had been drinking. Haertel acknowledged having been drunk, Lohman said.

Haertel told investigators that some people at the party were also using methamphetamine, though it was unclear if any of the four involved in the accident used the drug.

After leaving the party, the four took a kayak from a home on the shores of Lake Elsinore. The group shoved off from Crane Lakeside Park and Resort, a popular mobile home, camping and recreation center on the southeast side of the lake. All four were in or on the boat, built for two.

About 20 minutes later, Haertel told investigators, the kayak overturned. He managed to swim to shore, where he called the Sheriff’s Department, but he hasn’t seen the other three since.

At first, there were doubts about his story.

Six divers searched for five hours in water as deep as 15 feet. Haertel rode in a boat and pointed out the spot where the boat overturned, but the divers found no bodies. No teenagers were reported missing, and no boat was found. Haertel could not remember the names of his three companions, and investigators found his story “sketchy,” Lohman said.

Later on Sunday, though, the orange kayak was discovered floating in the lake, and other pieces of Haertel’s story started to add up. He told investigators that his shoes were too heavy as he swam to shore, so he kicked them off. The shoes were discovered at the bottom of the lake.

Time, Lohman said, “is on our side,” because as more hours pass without a parent calling to report their child missing, it becomes more likely that the other teenagers managed to make it to shore.

“It’s more of an indication that these kids are home,” Lohman said. “And if they are, they don’t want to come forward and say ‘That was us and we’re fine,’ Because they were probably in a place where their parents didn’t want them to be.”

But no one knows for sure, and Lake Elsinore residents waited Monday to find out if anyone was missing.

Some believe that the bodies are on the bottom of the lake but that there were so many boats out this weekend that the muck on the bottom was stirred up, concealing them.

Haertel told investigators that he did not see or hear any of the other teenagers after he fell from the boat. But Phil Berg, the owner of Crane Lakeside Park since 1975, said that’s not possible.

“If they were swimming, they all would have swum in the same direction and they all would have gotten to the shoreline in about the same place,” Berg said. “And he would have picked up on that. He would have heard something.”

That leads Berg to believe that the youths drowned, he said. On the other hand, Berg said, it is baffling that no one has been reported missing.

“A young person would have something going on, a social event, or going to work,” he said. “If it happened, it would be reported.”