More than two weeks after a police officer almost drowned trying to save a young man he says fell into a rain-swollen stream in southeast Denver, there’s been no sign of the missing person and no word of his fate.
Police now believe the unidentified youth who reportedly vanished into Goldsmith Gulch near Bible Park must have pulled himself out of the water but decided not to come forward, Denver police spokesman Sonny Jackson said.
No one has filed a missing-person report matching the youth’s description, Jackson said.
If he were a runaway or in trouble with the law, he might have decided not to come forward, said Lt. Phil Champagne, spokesman for the Denver Fire Department.
Champagne said the only description that authorities have of the missing person was provided by police Officer Jairon Katz.
“His word is good enough for us,” he said.
Katz has declined to speak publicly about the events of the night of May 14, when a torrential rainstorm hit the city. But John White, another Denver police spokesman, said Katz gave officials this account:
The officer was in his patrol car when a woman in her 60s approached him, saying there was someone in the water. Katz then saw a boy between the ages of 12 and 15, with blond hair and wearing a white shirt, in the water near the bank, holding a tree limb, White said.
Katz said he was reaching to grab the teen when he fell in. He said he had grabbed the boy but then lost control and went under the water, losing his grip on the youth, who was carried down the creek, White said.
Other officers and firefighters used a rope to rescue Katz, who was clinging to a guardrail in a concrete tunnel. He was later treated for symptoms of hypo thermia.
None of Katz’s rescuers saw anyone else in the water, nor did witnesses to the officer’s rescue, Champagne said. At the time, several people searched for the boy downstream but never got a glimpse of him.
Since the incident, firefighters – including divers – have repeatedly searched for a body without success, Champagne said. The waters of Goldsmith Gulch flow into Cherry Creek, and eventually into the South Platte River.
A body could still be caught on a snag too deep to be seen, Champagne said. Firefighters will continue to occasionally search for the youth indefinitely, he said.
“We don’t want a young child to find the body,” Champagne said.
The same evening Katz tried to rescue the youth, 2-year-old Jose Matthew Jauregui Jr. was swept from his stroller into Lakewood Gulch near Invesco Field at Mile High, and eventually into the South Platte. Two days later, his body was found on the Platte several miles downstream.
Staff writer Kirk Mitchell can be reached at 303-954-1206 or kmitchell@denverpost.com.
