HIGHLANDS, Texas - One man has died after drowning at Banana Bend Beach Saturday afternoon. Friends say 52-year-old Salvador Bueno, knew how to swim, but it still wasn’t enough to save his life.
Bueno was at the beach with friends, including Dalgis Cruz, who says it all happened so fast.
“Rapidisimo!,” Cruz said in Spanish describing the incident.
Cruz says Bueno was in the water just off the shore, when she got out of the water to take one of her kids back up to the sand.
“When she got to shore, a guy on shore said 'Hey, there’s a guy drowning.’ She turned around and didn’t see anybody,” said Captain Don Stanton with the Harris County Sheriff’s Marine Division.
Officials say Cruz and others went back into the water to try and find Bueno, but he was already gone.
They called emergency officials around 1 p.m. and Bueno's body was recovered about 30 minutes after the call.
He was pronounced dead at the scene.
According to the Highlands Fire Department, this is the first drowning death at Banana Bend Beach this year. In 2015, two other people also lost their lives in drowning accidents at the private beach.
Captain Stanton says many of the drowning calls they respond to at the beach are typically a result of the steep drop-offs in the riverbed.
He said the water quickly transitions from moderately shallow to dangerously deep, and it often catches swimmers off guard
“You could be in ankle-deep water, take a step, and you’re in 14-feet of water, because there are holes that have been eroded in the beach,” says Stanton.
Officials don’t know if that’s exactly what happened in Bueno’s case, but water patrol officers did measure where he went under, and the water in that specific spot measures 9 feet at one point, and just a few steps further, it measures at a much deeper 21 feet.
Cruz said she doesn’t know what caused Bueno to go under and never come back up.
She said she believes her friend’s life could have been saved if there had been a lifeguard there to help.
However, there are never guards on duty at Banana Bend Beach. Signs on the shore state that fact, and tell patrons that they’re swimming at their own risk.
Cruz believes the management at the private beach should consider changing that policy.
Authorities said they believe the signage on the beach is adequate, but with no guards on duty, people have to be even more aware of their surroundings, and consider additional safety methods like life jackets, especially for those who are not strong swimmers.