Divers Searching for Lost Fisherman

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The New York Sun

Divers looked yesterday for a man who was swept into the ocean by a wave while fishing with friends.

Karl Heinzen, 21, was knocked off a jetty and into the Atlantic Ocean on Sunday while fishing in the Rockaways with his father, Jerome Heinzen, and some friends.

The elder Mr. Heinzen said he saw his son get knocked off the algae-covered jetty by one wave and then swept away by another.

Witnesses said the younger Mr. Heinzen was wearing rubber overalls, which may have filled with water and weighed him down.

Mr. Heinzen, a Brooklyn college student, was described by his father as a strong swimmer.

The current swept Mr. Heinzen toward a nearby party boat, the Dorothy B., on which he had worked his last two years in high school, and the crew tried to rescue him, his father said.

“They almost saved him,” the elder Mr. Heinzen said. “They were so close. I can see him reaching for a buoy, but by that time he was probably too tired.”

Police helicopter and scuba teams joined firefighters and Coast Guard crews in searching for the young man. While the rescuers searched, his father and mother sat near the jetty and waited for news.


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