Wednesday, Jun. 04, 2008

Man who disappeared from houseboat remains missing

Family here from Kansas; Don Pedro still search site

Nine days after Edgar Delacruz disappeared from a houseboat at Lake Don Pedro, his family and friends are frustrated about the lack of answers.

No one on the houseboat saw him leave or fall in the water. No one heard anything unusual. One minute Delacruz was there. The next minute, he was missing.

Tuolumne County sheriff's deputies have searched for the 20-year-old Ceres resident since his disappearance May 25. Lt. Dan Bressler said they continued their search on land and water this week.

"Where the houseboat was moored where he went missing, there is 150 feet of water," Bressler said. "There is a current that runs through that area. If it were to pick a body up, it could carry it 400 to 500 feet where we'd never find it, right outside the cove."

Bressler said deputies are treating Delacruz's case the way they do any other, as a criminal investigation, though they have found nothing to suggest foul play.

Investigators have been using sonar equipment and will continue to search until they "determined there is nowhere for us to reasonably look," Bressler said.

"We'll do whatever our equipment allows us to do," he said. "Sometimes bodies come up. Sometimes they don't. (Someone) could be wrapped up in a cable, too. There are a lot of different moored boats out there.

"It would be great if he walked up and said, 'Hey, I hear you guys are looking for me.' "

Family and friends would love for that to happen, too. They said it's not like Delacruz to wander off and not contact anyone. The 5-foot, 8-inch, 160-pound Delacruz is a former Modesto Junior College football player. He knows how to swim.

He last was seen about 8:30 p.m. May 25, headed to the back patio of a houseboat to make a phone call.

Victoria Whitely of Modesto, a 2004 Johansen High graduate and Delacruz's girlfriend of almost two years, said she realized he was missing minutes later.

Early reports from the Tuolumne County Sheriff's Department indicated there was a large amount of alcohol on the houseboat.

Whitely said she saw Delacruz drink three shots of tequila after arriving at the houseboat between 6 and 6:45 p.m. She remembers Delacruz wearing tennis shoes, black and white swim trunks, a gray zippered, hooded sweat shirt and a red baseball cap. The weather was cool and a light rain had fallen that day -- the Sunday of Memorial Day weekend.

Whitely said she had been with him on the water the previous weekend, wakeboarding and swimming, in a different part of the lake. And she said he had been to the houseboat at least once before, having attended a similar Memorial Day party there in 2007.

A feeling of helplessness

Family and friends have hiked around Lake Don Pedro looking for Delacruz, despite protests from sheriff's officials that they could get in the way. All said they feel helpless.

His mother Irma and two sisters arrived Friday from their home in Dodge City, Kan., and have been to the lake and spoken with sheriff's officials. Bressler said all he can tell them is "that we're searching for his body and other than that, we don't know where he's at."

The lack of information breaks Irma Delacruz's heart. The Spanish speaker said her only son decided he wanted to stay in the area after a summer vacation to visit his aunt, her sister Anna Guerra, in Ceres.

"He said he liked it here," Irma Delacruz said through her daughter Dania, 21. "I always thought about him, always worried about him. I worried more when he was out on his own about his expenses. I felt more comfortable when he moved back with his aunt."