A 32-year-old Hayward man, who was not wearing a life jacket, died in a drowning Saturday in the American River near Rancho Cordova, authorities said.
Kelvin Manabat Felarca died in the drowning Saturday, the Sacramento County Coroner’s Office confirmed Tuesday.
Felarca’s body was recovered about 100 yards downstream from where he went under the water and didn’t come up, said Battalion Chief Parker Wilbourn, a spokesman for the Sacramento Metropolitan Fire District. A Sacramento County Sheriff’s Office dive team recovered the man’s body.
Wilbourn said Felarca was not wearing a life jacket when he was last seen playing in the water near the El Manto River Access, also known as the Clay Banks. The Metro Fire spokesman also said Saturday’s incident, before it became a recovery operation, was the seventh water rescue reported to the agency in a week.
“We continue to tell people to wear life jackets, and they don’t,” Wilbourn told The Sacramento Bee on Tuesday. “The water is still cold (despite this summer’s triple-digit weather). There are areas in the river moving faster than others.”