'Tragic accident': Body recovered from pond at Red Rock Canyon Open Space

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. (KKTV) - Firefighters confirmed they have recovered a man's body from a pond at Red Rock Canyon Open Space.

It was the expected but unwanted outcome of a rescue-turned-recovery mission that started Tuesday night when firefighters were called to the west Springs park on a 25-year-old man who had gone into the water and never re-emerged.

#ColoradoSpringsFire is responding to a report of a missing swimmer in the water at Red Rock Canyon open space.
— CSFD PIO (@CSFDPIO) August 18, 2021

The man's cousin told firefighters the victim plummeted from several feet into the water.

"They said that the person fell down. There's kind of a rock face that's up in that area, fell down and went into the water and didn't resurface," said Capt. Michael Smaldino with the Colorado Springs Fire Department.

Officials are calling the incident a tragic accident. They are still investigating whether the man slipped or if he jumped.

"The local person had mentioned that people jumped off this cliff in the past, but that the water is so shallow right now that it's not a good idea. Against their caution, something to the extent of, 'Watch this,' and he may have jumped off on his own accord," said Colorado Springs police Sgt. Bobby Dazey Wednesday following the recovery operation.

The accident happened in a pond between the Red Rock Canyon and Greenlee trails near the main parking lot on the north side of the park. Smaldino said the person may have fallen or jumped from as far as 10-20 feet.

"The biggest thing that we can always ask for is that somebody actually points and remembers the last point that somebody went into the water," Smaldino said. "We immediately got somebody over that area, got flashlights into the area and then that started the response."

CSFD Divers from Rescue 17 are in the water searching for a person that witnesses said fell into the water and did not resurface. Crews are still working this as a rescue pic.twitter.com/UkVdrvW1oV
— CSFD PIO (@CSFDPIO) August 18, 2021

After 90 minutes with no sign of the victim, firefighters changed the operation to a recovery.

"We do have about an hour of that 'golden hour' that we call it. Unfortunately, here we're about an hour and a half into it, and so we're changing over to a recovery operation, which we have a boat that's on the water that has sonar. So, what we're doing now is getting the boat over into the area where the person was seen going in, and hopefully here pretty soon we'll be able to map the bottom and find the individual," Smaldino told 11 News late Tuesday night.

The search resumed just after 10 Wednesday morning.

"Within about 20 minutes of getting back in the water, we were able to find our victim. He was found in the area we identified last night. The difference between night and daytime is evident here. We were able to really focus in on the area. Last night, we used the police department drone and today we used the fire department drone to kind of identify a couple of areas where we might have seen some shadows. We were able to find the victim in those areas," Smaldino said.

"Our divers last night, when they got to the cliff they reported it goes down about 13 feet in that area. The lowest area they were searching is about 16 feet. But they were running into grasses and trees and branches and everything that is down there. The water itself, once they got below about 3 feet, they weren't even able to see the hands in front of their face."

The victim has not been identified at the time of this writing.

Part of the main parking lot was closed for the search. It was reopened Wednesday afternoon.

Report of shots fired in broad daylight at a Colorado Springs park