AN­NA LISA PAUL

Se­nior Re­porter

The body found along the Ari­ma–Blan­chisseuse Road has been iden­ti­fied as miss­ing 47-year-old Fire Of­fi­cer Bruce Leza­ma.

A rel­a­tive iden­ti­fied his body this morn­ing.

Leza­ma, who was at­tached to the Am­bu­lance Sec­tion North, was last seen alive on Christ­mas Day.

He was re­port­ed miss­ing af­ter he failed to re­port for du­ty on Sat­ur­day (De­cem­ber 27, 2025).

Rel­a­tives lat­er went to his home in Ari­ma, where they found the door open and his ve­hi­cle miss­ing. It was sub­se­quent­ly dis­cov­ered aban­doned along River­side Road.

Ac­cord­ing to pres­i­dent of the Fire Ser­vice As­so­ci­a­tion Sec­ond Di­vi­sion, Keone Guy, se­cu­ri­ty cam­era footage from the res­i­dence showed two uniden­ti­fied in­di­vid­u­als re­mov­ing the fire of­fi­cer from the prop­er­ty.

And while fire of­fi­cers from the San­ta Cruz Fire Sta­tion were on their way to as­sist with the ex­trac­tion of Leza­ma’s body, their ve­hi­cle was struck by a mo­torist.

Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands that nei­ther the fire of­fi­cers nor civil­ians in the ac­ci­dent were in­jured.

In ad­di­tion, re­pairs have be­gun on the fire ten­der which sus­tained some dam­age.