Swimmer who drowned in L.B. found in A.B.

The body of Emanuel Tiburcio, a Brooklyn man who drowned in the ocean off Long Beach last week, was found in Atlantic Beach on Saturday.

An off-duty FBI agent found Tiburcio's body between rocks in the water near the shore at Silver Point, a Nassau County park at the westernmost tip of Atlantic Beach, at about noon on May 29. The 19-year-old Tiburcio, who was known to friends as Manny, went missing off the beach at Edwards Boulevard in Long Beach at about 1:50 p.m. on May 26, according to Long Beach Fire Commissioner Scott Kemins.

Kemins said that while Tiburcio's friends were rescued, rescue crews were unable to recover the young man's body. "Three of them got in trouble and two of them were rescued," Kemins said, "and the other, unfortunately, was not."

One of Tiburcio's friends told Kemins that he last saw him floating face-down in the water near a jetty. After more than 90 minutes of searching, emergency personnel switched from rescue to recovery protocol and continued to monitor the ocean with helicopters and boats, Kemins said.

More than a dozen swimmers were pulled from the ocean on May 26, just three days before lifeguards began working on the holiday weekend.

Paul Gillespie, chief of Long Beach lifeguards, said that guards were getting the beach ready that day. "We loaded the trucks with everything, just in case, and it worked because we did save about 15 people," Gillespie said. "Thank God we were there, because you would have had 15 drownings."

Gillespie said that surfers brought a number of distressed swimmers in to shore on their boards.

"The problem is, you get warm weather, people out of college, high school kids skipping school and the water is bad — it's a recipe for a nightmare," Kemins said, adding that some of those who were rescued had abrasions from hitting the jetties, or had swallowed water. A few had to be transported to the Long Beach Medical Center, but the majority received medical attention on the beach.

Every rescue call but one, Kemins said, involved teenagers or young adults from New York City. "Long Beach kids know the water," he said. "They respect it; they know not to go in. Always it's the out-of-towners from Queens or Brooklyn. No matter how many signs you put up and no matter

how many times you warn them, they don't

understand it."

Comments about this story? JKellard@liherald.com or (516) 569-4000 ext.