The 27-year-old man who died after being pulled unconscious from the water at Naperville’s Centennial Beach Thursday had been swimming with a group of friends to a floating dock when he disappeared, Naperville police said.
As his friends realized Manuel Jose Rosales Yajure, 27, of Streamwood, was no longer with them, they returned to shore to look for him there, according to a police department news release. They then alerted lifeguards, who started a missing person search.
Naperville police arrived at the scene about 5:45 p.m. and Yajure was located and removed from the water about 15 minutes later, the police report said.
Unconscious and unresponsive, the man was taken to Endeavor Health Edward Hospital in Naperville and later pronounced dead.
There was no indication of foul play, police said. The DuPage County coroner’s office conducted an autopsy Friday but a preliminary cause of death likely will not be available until Monday, an office spokesman said.
Centennial Beach was closed all day Friday, and will remain closed Saturday. Normal hours will resume Sunday, according to a park district announcement.
Mary Lou Wehrli, a Naperville resident and former member of the Naperville Park Board and DuPage County Forest Preserve District Board, said she was walking her dog along the Naperville Riverwalk when she heard a “crescendo of sirens” and watched as teams of lifeguards searched the water.
“They each had a job, and they worked as little mini-teams of guards to go down as a team and come up,” Wehrli said. “They had a protocol. ‘On my call, three, two, one, go,’ and then the team of five or six guards would all dive at once. … And (as) those teams are doing certain sections of the beach, other teams are checking the area underneath each of the two (floating) rafts and under the three piers to be sure no one’s under there.”
When the lifeguards finally found the missing person, later identified as Yajure, a whistle blew three times in succession, she said. All of the guards then rushed over to the northwest area of the pool’s deep end, where one of them brought the man to the surface, she said.
“The guards exited the water. They sat together, breathing heavy. I’m sure their hearts were heavy, but they were still so strong,” Wehrli said. “I watched it. It was very sad, because the first thing the paramedics do is check the pulse. And you could tell (the victim was in trouble).”
The mood following the rescue was a “stunned silence of loss,” she said. “Everyone was feeling very, very sad.”
It is unclear if anyone has died at Centennial Beach prior to Thursday. Naperville Park District officials did not respond to a request for information on drownings and rescues at the venue.
There was at least one near-drowning incident in 2018 when a 14-year-old boy jumped from a diving board into 15 feet of water and failed to resurface. Lifeguards rushed into the water, brought the teen to the deck and performed CPR until paramedics arrived, according to a story published in the Naperville Sun.
The Naperville fire chief presented the lifeguards who saved him with citizens awards.
Centennial Beach has been as a public swimming facility since 1932. It’s actually part of a former limestone quarry that was in use until 1913, according to a Naperville Park District website.
Plans to convert a portion of it into a swimming facility began with a group of local residents who purchased it in 1931 in honor of Naperville’s centennial anniversary and gifted it to the city. With help from Works Progress Administration laborers, its converstion into a swimming venue was done in 1932 and it opened for public use that summer. Two years later, WPA workers completed construction of a limestone bathhouse, according to the history.
The city turned over ownership of the pool to the park district in 1969, and in the ensuing years numerous improvements and amenities have been added.
