Man drowns in Kern River
BY STEVE E. SWENSON, Californian staff writer sswenson@bakersfield.com
A 42-year-old San Fernando Valley man drowned Tuesday afternoon in the Kern River at Kernville.
The sheriff's Search and Rescue team just finished pulling him out of the water when they had to go to another suspected drowning near Sandy Flat below the Isabella Lake dam.
The victim at Riverside Park in Kernville was Claudio Estrada, according to his son, Eddie, who stood crying in the park with his mother and sibling.
The family was waiting for someone to drive them home because the mother was too distraught to drive, Eddie said.
A witness, Karrie Maeda, 50, of Palmdale, said Estrada had been playing with his kids in a beach raft at about 3:15 p.m.
At one point, the raft suddenly overturned, Maeda said.
"We thought a child went down," she said.
People tried to make a human chain to reach the victim, but the current was too strong, she said.
Ultimately, search and rescue came and was able to get the victim from where he was struck in some rocks, she said.
Something may have caught his leg as he was in the raft, his son said.
Lt. Bart Camps, who heads the Search and Rescue unit, said the crew was called by a rafting company to check out what appeared to be a body among some underwater branches in the Sandy Flat area between where Highway 178 becomes four lanes and the dam.
Information was not available Tuesday evening on whether the team found a body. "We have no reports of missing people in the river," Camps said.
-- Staff photographer Casey Christie contributed to this report.
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