Although a Denver Police officer working off-duty at City Park Jazz was the first to respond, the Denver Fire Department tweeted the initial public alert at 9:30 p.m.: “Denver Fire crews on scene near 17th and York for a static water rescue. Party seen going under water and did not resurface. Divers currently in water searching for party.” At 10:26 p.m., the DFD tweeted that the victim had been pulled to the shore by rescuers and transported to Denver Health.
The next morning, the Denver Police Department reported that the “adult male” had been pronounced deceased at the hospital. According to the Denver Medical Examiner’s office, the cause of death is still under investigation.
Ronnie Deshe had never been to a City Park Jazz concert before he went with some friends on June 25 and joined “loads of people” at the free show. After the performance by Ritmo Jazz Latino ended, he and his friends hung around the park for a while, then walked to his car.
“I hear some sort of yelling or singing or something,” Deshe recalls. It was a man treading water in the lake; a small crowd was watching. “It didn’t seem like anything was terribly wrong at that exact moment,” he adds. “Out of nowhere, police show up.”
According to the DPD, the incident started around 9 p.m. with a report of a possible drowning or suicide attempt, and a witness told the original responding officer that the man “had been yelling and making suicidal statements before jumping into Ferril Lake from the north shoreline.”
Once the officer arrived, Deshe began filming.
Deshe titled the video “Denver cops let man drown.” In retrospect, he admits that the title was a touch over-sensational, but he still feels that more could have been done to save the man. “Obviously, I have strong opinions about what the cops should have done,” he says.
His video starts with a man treading water around twenty or thirty feet away from the shore. An officer standing on the shore is shining a flashlight on the man and shouting, “Hey! Get out of the water.”
Two women on a pedal-powered rented swan boat who appear to be paddling toward the man turn toward the shore after the officer shouts his first command. The cop points his flashlight at the women and tells them to “paddle towards me.” Meanwhile, the man in the lake swims farther away.
After the swan boat reaches the shore, the officer steps on board and the women start pedaling back to the man in the water. A few seconds later, his head goes underwater long enough for a spectator in the background to ask, “Is he drowning?” At that moment, his head pops back up.
“Swim back toward land!” the officer shouts. Sirens in the background grow louder, as more cops arrive on the scene.
“At this point, it seemed like something more serious was going on,” Deshe recalls. “It was clear that the guy was struggling.”
In the video, as the swan boat gets closer, the man does not try to swim to the boat or to the shore. The camera pans around to show more cop cars arriving; when it pans back, the man is either underwater or behind the swan boat. The officer on the boat is moving his flashlight around, apparently looking for the man.
Two of the cops who’ve just arrived take off their gear belts, jump in the water and swim over to the swan boat.
“‘That’s good. They’re going to go get this guy,'” Deshe remembers thinking. “But instead they just swam over to the duck boat.”
After that, for at least 38 seconds of the video, the man cannot be seen except for one brief moment, when his head briefly pops up out of the water near the far side of the boat.
One officer swims behind the boat, which drifts over to the right side of the frame and blocks any view of the officer. It drifts further and reveals the officer treading water; the man is not in sight. A moment later, he pops out of the water about ten feet away from that officer.
The cops in the water swim to the boat, and hang on the back. The man goes under, pops back up one more time, then goes down again and does not resurface. The officer already on the boat searches the water with his flashlight. He calls to shore for more officers to shine their flashlights. More people in swan boats arrive in the area.
The police search for a few more minutes until the women in the swan boat eventually take them back to shore.
Firefighters arrive soon after; one goes into the water with a flotation device and a line attached to his back so that he can be pulled back to shore. He searches the water unsuccessfully…and at that point, the video ends. Deshe says he had to leave, but was hopeful at the time that the man had swum to the other side of the lake.
DPD spokesperson Jay Casillas gives this account of the incident:
“The officer on the boat attempted to grab the male when the boat was near him, but the male pushed off the bow of the boat and went back underwater. Two uniformed officers entered the water and swam towards the male. When these officers got near him, he intentionally moved away from the officers. The officers recognized the erratic behavior being exhibited by the male and were concerned he may pull them under if they continued towards him. When the male went under the water for the last time, the officers continued efforts to locate him in the murky water but were unsuccessful. The male was ultimately recovered by the Denver Fire Department’s dive team just before 10:00 pm. He was transported to [Denver Health] where he was later pronounced deceased.”
City Park Jazz got off to a rocky start this year. Bad weather resulted in low attendance at its first show of the season on June 4, and worse weather canceled the June 11 show altogether. Conditions were better for the next two shows, and weather reports look good for tonight’s event with Wellington Bullings. But a few concert-goers who lingered after the June 25 show may still have some questions, as do members of the victim’s family, who declined to speak for this story
“While this all occurred after our show had ended and outside of our permitted area, we are very saddened by this course of events and the loss of this man’s life,” says a City Park Jazz spokesman. “We send our deepest condolences to the man’s family and loved ones.”
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