A day at the beach yes­ter­day turned trag­ic for a group of friends from Ari­ma, when 35-year-old An­drew Cur­tis Clarke went miss­ing in the sea at Pen­zante Bay, Ba­lan­dra.

Clarke had gone ap­prox­i­mate­ly 100 feet in­to the wa­ter to re­trieve a foot­ball around 2.40 pm, when he got in­to dif­fi­cul­ties.

His friends had warned him not to en­ter the wa­ter.

A co­conut pick­er at­tempt­ed to as­sist Clarke by swim­ming out with a rope, but Clarke dis­ap­peared be­neath the sur­face and did not resur­face.

Sgt Kei­th Cas­tro Leon and PC Ma­haraj, of the To­co Po­lice Sta­tion, re­spond­ed, spoke with Clarke’s friends and co­or­di­nat­ed search ef­forts.

Pro­fes­sion­al divers from Ba­lan­dra con­duct­ed an ex­ten­sive search with­out suc­cess.

Sgt Leon con­tin­ues to in­ves­ti­gate and the po­lice have reached out to the Coast Guard and oth­er agen­cies to as­sist in lo­cat­ing Clarke’s body. - Ralph Ban­warie