Deputy observed 3-inch-long laceration on one of victim’s legs and smaller lacerations on other leg
The Sarasota County Sheriff’s Office is investigating the second shoreline death on Siesta Key to occur within eight days, it announced on the afternoon of Sunday, Sept. 21.
In this latest incident, the identity of the victim remained unknown as of Sept. 24.
A deputy and Sarasota County Fire Department EMS personnel responded to Beach Access 9 early in the afternoon of Sept. 21 “after an unresponsive male swimmer” was pulled from the Gulf by people on the shore, the Sheriff’s Office said in a Sept. 21 advisory.
“First responders provided life-saving efforts at the scene, but the adult male subject was pronounced deceased,” the advisory added.
Detectives with the Sheriff’s Office were “working to identify the Subject,” the advisory noted.
The copy of the report that The Sarasota News Leader received late in the morning of Sept. 24 — after making a formal request for it — said that the victim still had not been identified. The report did note that the white male appeared to be 40; his height was 5 feet 10 inches, while his weight was 210 pounds.
The deputy who responded to Beach Access 9 wrote in the report’s narrative that he was dispatched to the location at about 2:45 p.m. on Sept. 21. The formal address, the report pointed out, was 514 Beach Road.
Upon arrival, the deputy continued, he found that the victim was in an EMS unit of the Sarasota County Fire Department.
At 3 p.m., he continued, paramedics ceased the life-saving measures that they had begun and pronounced the male to be deceased.
The deputy then spoke with one witness, Amy Sasso of Newbury, Mass., who said that she had observed the victim, who was on a sandbar in the Gulf, calling for help and waving his arms.
Moments later, she continued, the victim collapsed and went under the water. “She helped pull him onto the shore with other pedestrians on the beach,” the narrative said. “Amy began chest compressions,” it added, and “[l]arge amounts” of seawater were expelled from the victim’s lungs.
The paramedics arrived shortly afterward, she told the deputy.
A second witness, Pamela Wambach of Lakewood Ranch, talked with the deputy later by phone, the report said. She explained that she had “observed the victim scream for help” and then begin “ ‘thrashing around in the water’ ” before collapsing and submerging in the Gulf.
At first, Wambach told the deputy, she thought the man was being attacked by a shark, because of the intensity of his thrashing.
After the victim was transported to Sarasota Memorial Hospital, the report continued, the deputy traveled there to meet with a Sheriff’s Office Forensics technician and a detective. The technician photographed the victim, the report said, while the detective was briefed on the details of the incident.
Another deputy who came to the hospital used a “Rapid ID reader” to try to determine the name of the victim, the report added, but his efforts proved unsuccessful. “Simultaneously, the Siesta Key deputies continually canvassed the beach on ATVs,” as they attempted to locate anyone with whom the victim might have come into contact, the report said.
When the deputy who wrote the narrative examined the victim’s body at the hospital, the report noted, the deputy saw “no apparent fresh injuries. However,” the report said, the victim “did have a large laceration near his left calf muscle [that was] approximately 3 inches long.” Further, the deputy wrote, the victim had “several small lacerations on his right leg near his calf muscle. It was unclear if those injuries were sustained from this [Sept. 21] event or earlier,” though they appeared to be recent, the deputy pointed out.
Reports of shark attacks on Siesta Key have been rare over the past 20 years.
The Forensics technician did obtain the victim’s fingerprints, the report added.
The District 12 Medical Examiner’s Office was to perform an autopsy on Monday, Sept. 22, the report said.