Heroin and needles found, woman dead, after migrant boat flips near popular San Diego surf spot

"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. 

(See photos here.) 

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.

A short time after the Ocean Beach landing, the US Coast Guard intercepted two boats, each carrying 15 suspected illegal migrants.

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.”