An athlete died while training for a swim between Alcatraz Island and San Francisco.
Nikolas Tomašević spoke to his family on Saturday (23 Aug) morning, just an hour before he disappeared.
Before ending the call, the 35-year-old told them he was going swimming and would call back afterwards – but that call never came.
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Three days later, on Tuesday (26 Aug) morning, divers recovered his body from “zero-visibility water” in San Francisco’s Aquatic Park Cove.
The alarm was first raised when Nikolas failed to return to the Dolphin Swimming and Boating Club, of which he was a member.
Lt Mariano Elias of the San Francisco Fire Department said: “Unfortunately, that person waited four hours to let us know.
“That is the gap in time that doesn’t really allow us to get a pinpoint location.”
Nikolas was born in Zimbabwe and spent his childhood in Belgrade, as reported by Need To Know.
He finished high school in Kentucky, where he played basketball, before settling in San Francisco.
An experienced swimmer, he regularly swam along Aquatic Park Cove, a stretch of about one mile.
His wife, Aleksandra Ivanova, said he had been training to swim from Alcatraz Island to the mainland, a distance of about 1.25 miles.
She added that he had previously suffered from epilepsy.
A GoFundMe page set up to fund the repatriation of his body to Serbia states: “Nikolas will be remembered as a kind, selfless, decent human being.
“The Dolphin Club was his happy place, and he left us doing what he loved most – swimming in the Bay.”
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