By Fred Swegles
The Orange County Register
SAN CLEMENTE, Calif. — The family of a 26-year-old Murrieta man who drowned Sunday off Linda Lane Beach is raising questions about the search that San Clemente city lifeguards made for him after his brother reported him missing.
Christopher Michael Johnson was found floating in the ocean late Sunday afternoon and was later pronounced dead at Saddleback Memorial Hospital San Clemente, authorities said.
“We’re all heartbroken that maybe, if the lifeguard would have went into the water a little bit quicker or, instead of telling our son’s friend and Chris’ friend to run back up to your house, maybe he wandered off and went up there, that maybe it would have turned out a little bit different,” said Richard Crilly, Johnson’s stepfather.
Trasie Fletcher, a Mission Viejo resident, said via e-mail that she was at the beach at the time and that “about an hour went by while the lifeguard looked through the binoculars and then the sheriff came and took a report and then left.
Then, about another 45 minutes went by before four Jeeps pulled up and the guards started diving in the water ... then the boat came and they brought Christopher up onto the boat and they took off to the harbor. I kept asking my boyfriend, ‘Why are they waiting so long?’”
Reached Tuesday by telephone, Fletcher said: “I’m not in any way placing blame on the lifeguard. I don’t know what their procedures are. I just know that if it had been my kid, I would have been like, ‘Why aren’t you looking?’”
The Orange County Coroner’s Office reported Monday that Johnson had a clinical history of seizures but it wasn’t known whether he had suffered one in the ocean Sunday.
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