Student found dead in Aquatic Park Lagoon

By Greg Zeman
STAFF WRITER

City College student Jorge Baires, 19, was found dead Aug. 26 in the Aquatic Park Lagoon, just four hours after he was scheduled to attend an 8 a.m. English class at Ocean campus.

The official cause of death has not yet been released, but information from the San Francisco Medical Examiners Office states that an investigation is ongoing.

According to Baires’ uncle, Juan Guevara, his nephew left at the “normal time” in the morning to catch his bus for school.
“It’s kind of puzzling,” Guevara said. “We’re still trying to figure out what happened. What was he doing down there?”

Baires’ body was discovered by John Cunnane, an employee of the National Parks Service. At roughly 12:30 p.m., Cunnane called in what he believed to be a sea lion drifting on the relatively calm water of the Aquatic Park Lagoon.

On her way to get a boat to retrieve what they presumed to be an animal, maintenance worker Amalia Demarchis spotted three police squad cars and yellow crime scene tape on the beach.

“I told an officer that I was going out to retrieve the dead sea lion,” Demarchis said.  “The officer told me that it wasn’t a sea lion, and that’s when I saw the body on the beach, covered with a sheet. I didn’t want to look after that.”

Witnesses said Baires was wearing a black top with dark pants and black shoes.  Construction workers with Berkeley Cement Inc., stationed approximately 200 yards away from the body, mistook the dark clothes for a wet-suit, contributing to rumors that Baires was a swimmer.

At this point, it is unknown how Baires ended up in the water. Guevara couldn’t think of anyone Baires might have been visiting near the Aquatic Park or the Marina.

Eric Olson, a maintenance employee at Aquatic Park, said that the walls under the two piers that form the lagoon are ventilated and that items drift in from all over the bay and end up in Aquatic Park. “Sometimes we even get bird shot from duck hunters on the Sacramento river washing up on the beach,” Olson said. “It was a real shock how that happened. He didn’t look like he’d been in the water very long.”

Friends and family of Baires have stated he did not exhibit any tendencies that would lead them to suspect suicide.