“If I was still a junkie I would’ve thrown it in my
wetsuit and run up to the car.”
A BeachGrit habitué from San Diego has told of harrowing
scenes at Ocean Beach after a vessel carrying illegal migrants
flipped, trapping two inside the boat’s hold.
Boats filled with new Americans making audacious beach landings
have become such a staple of everyday life in San Diego County,
although Malibu is also
popular, it now surpasses border town Tuscon, Arizona,
as the hottest migrant hub in the union.
Four days earlier, 26 new Americans were taken into custody
after their panga-style boat ran out of fuel one mile offshore from
Oceanside Harbour.
And a few days before that, another panga was intercepted twenty
five miles off Point Loma, with 15 new Americans from China,
Uzbekistan, Mexico, Ecuador, Vietnam and El Salvador arrested.
Anyway, boats everywhere.
And our BeachGrit was doin’ a little surf check this morn, seven
thirts, when he saw a Mexican couple walking up from the beach,
holding hands, broad smiles, completely soaked.
He looked further afield and saw a cabin cruiser, thirty feet or
so, flipped over in the shore break after taking a wave broadside
on the way in. His pal, who spoke a little Spanish, found out
everyone had split leaving two souls trapped in the boat, an old
man and a woman.
He says it took lifeguards six to eight minutes to top the boat
back over . The old man was pulled out, hypothermic but ok, but the
woman was dragged onto the sand where lifeguards performed CPR.
“I watched her die in front of me,” he says. “It was so heavy.
I’ve never seen anyone die. They did CPR for ten minutes but
couldn’t revive her.”
After, as fire crew and cops mingled on the beach, our reader
and a pal picked up trash, gas cans floating in the water and a
neat little plastic bag filled with heroin and a handful of
needles.
How’d he know it was heroin and not dirty coke?
“Twenty three years ago I was a heroin addict. I know heroin
when I see it. It looks like coke, basically, but heroin when it’s
in really good form it looks like a tan version of coke. When it’s
shitty Mexican tar heroin it’s gooey, when it’s in a good form it’s
like a light tan powder.”
A pause. I can hear our pal smile.
“It was the good shit. If I was still a junkie I would’ve thrown
it in my wetsuit and run up to the car.”
