Man dies after 40-foot jump from Huntington Beach Pier

Police are investigating a death that occurred at the Huntington Beach Pier Sunday evening, when a 44-year-old man jumped off the structure after another individual and was retrieved, unresponsive, from the water by surfers.

Huntington Beach spokeswoman Jennifer Carey said reports began coming into the police department at around 6:30 p.m. regarding two subjects who’d jumped off the pier into the ocean below. When officers arrived at the scene, they found one of the jumpers, a 36-year-old woman, had made it to shore uninjured.

The man — identified Monday by the county coroner’s office as Fenton Auston Dee III, of Norwalk — was unresponsive when surfers pulled him out of the water, Carey said Monday. Marine Safety and fire crews attempted to treat Dee and transported him to nearby Hoag Hospital, where he was declared dead.

Surfers near the Huntington Beach Pier Sunday evening help a man and woman who jumped off the iconic structure.

(Edmundo Alarcon)

“We don’t believe there to be any foul play, but we’re obviously going to talk to those who may have seen something,” she said.

A witness to Sunday’s scene, Edmundo Alarcon, of Hollywood, said he’d been on the pier to watch the sunset with a friend and was walking back from the end when he saw a woman standing on the outside of the structure’s railing, engaged in conversation with a man who appeared to be with her.

“It looked like she just wanted to jump for fun, like she wanted to do it and then she didn’t,” Alarcon said Monday, indicating at one point, the woman was hanging onto the pier by one arm. “You can tell he didn’t want to [jump]. I don’t know if he was trying to stop her.”

Given the reported tidal conditions at the time of the incident, Huntington Beach Marine Safety Division Chief Eric Dieterman estimated it was more than a 40-foot drop from the pier to the water for the jumpers.

A splash made by a 44-year-old Norwalk man, who jumped from the Huntington Beach Pier Sunday after a woman he was with jumped into the water below.

(Edmundo Alarcon)

“The ocean conditions are constantly changing based on tides, surf conditions and time of the year,” Dieterman said in a statement. “Due to these changing conditions, and the 40- to 45-foot pier height, pier jumping is prohibited.”

Alarcon confirmed Monday the waves were strong, and at one point he was worried the woman who jumped might be tossed upon the pylons of the pier. When she appeared to be fine, people on the pier began to cheer. That’s when the man jumped in, he said.

“It had looked like she was struggling at first, so I think he just made a decision he was going to help her,” Alarcon said. “It looked like they both got to the surfers together and they were OK — something must have happened between then and their reaching the shore.”

Carrie Braun, a spokeswoman for the Orange County Sheriff’s Department, said the coroner’s office planned to conduct an autopsy, including a toxicology report, on Dee’s body.

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