The body of a man who drowned while at Pen­zante Bay, Ba­lan­dra, on Thurs­day, has been found.

Po­lice said lo­cal divers from Ba­lan­dra re­trieved the body of An­drew Clarke, 35, of Ackra­bali Street, Mal­abar, Ari­ma, around 8.15 yes­ter­day morn­ing.

Clarke’s body was lo­cat­ed close to where he dis­ap­peared. At the time, the Mal­abar res­i­dent was at­tempt­ing to re­cov­er a foot­ball that went in­to the wa­ter.

Clarke, along with friends, went to Pen­zante Bay to spend the day.

Around 2.40 pm, they were en­gaged in a foot­ball game on the shore when the ball was kicked in­to the wa­ter.

Clarke de­cid­ed to go af­ter it de­spite his friends ap­peal­ing to him not to ven­ture in­to the chop­py wa­ter.

Eye­wit­ness­es told po­lice that Clarke got in­to dif­fi­cul­ty about 100 feet from where he was try­ing to col­lect the ball.

Po­lice said a co­conut pick­er who saw what was hap­pen­ing went in­to the wa­ter with a rope to save Clarke, but he dis­ap­peared un­der the wa­ter and nev­er resur­faced.

Divers from Matu­ra went in search of him, but that proved fu­tile.

The search ef­fort re­sumed around 6 am yes­ter­day with Coast Guard divers, Air Sup­port per­son­nel and oth­er agen­cies in the area. But divers from the area found Clarke.

PC Pra­ki Ma­harah, of To­co Po­lice Sta­tion, is con­tin­u­ing en­quiries.

Mean­while, Sgt Kei­th Cas­tro Leon, of To­co Po­lice Sta­tion, has cau­tioned beach­go­ers to be aware of the dan­gers they may face while go­ing to beach­es.

He de­scribed Pen­zante Bay as one of the more dan­ger­ous beach­es along the North East coast and warned peo­ple to be aware of its strong cur­rents and chop­py wa­ters. - Ralph Ban­warie