A 30-year-old man drowned off of Chimney Beach on the east shore of Lake Tahoe on Saturday afternoon while boating with friends.
"Friends he was with said he jumped off of the boat into the water and they saw problems right away. He was in distress," said Petty Officer Nathan Blackwell said.
They apparently tried doing CPR on the man after getting him into the boat, but because of the man's size, pulling him into the boat took some time.
Placer County Sheriff's boat patrol deputies arrived on the scene first and turned the case over to Washoe County. Blackwell said he arrived on the scene about 10 minutes later.
"We transported the victim from the boat to Placer County's boat," he said. "Placer County deputies continued CPR."
The man was then transferred to a Washoe County Sheriff's boat.
The North Lake Tahoe Fire Protection District got a phone call from a cell phone at 3:35 p.m.
"We were on scene at 4:01, said Battalion Chief Dennis Perry. "The boat was still a couple of minutes out."
All of the agencies that responded coordinated their efforts well, according to Perry.
"CareFlight helped run the cardiac with us," said Scott Burgess, paramedic with the NLTFPD.
The man was taken to the Incline Village Community Hospital by ambulance. Dr. Dianne Higgins in the emergency room of the Incline Village Community Hospital said they get a lot of hypothermia cases in which people can be revived but in this case, it sadly didn't work.
Burgess said he talked to the victim's friends and discovered they all work with a financial investment group in Southern California.
"I've seen about 20 of these drownings in Tahoe," Burgess said. "They're horrible."
He said there are many theories about why some people get in trouble so quickly in the water. It's a reflex in which the body just seems to shut down, he added.
