Samohi
Teacher Missing off Panama Coast |
By Jorge Casuso
July 19 – Joey Lutz, a 25-year-old English teacher
at Santa Monica High School, is missing after being swept out to
sea Thursday on a remote coast of Panama, his family said Saturday.
Lutz, who has taught at Samohi for three years, was standing in shallow water
in the Bocas del Toro region when he was swept away by a wave and carried out
to sea by a riptide, according to his mother Freda Lutz.
“Joey panicked,” Lutz said from her home in Culver City. “He
was pulled away.”
Lutz, who received the news in an email from travelling companions her son
met on the trip, is calling on the U.S. government to intensify its search for
her son and employ military troops stationed in the country.
“We want them to intensify the search and maybe they’ll find the
body, or maybe there’ll be a miracle and they’ll find him holding
on to a rock or something,” Lutz said.
A man and a woman who were travelling with Lutz after meeting him in Panama
told his mother that they jumped in the water to try to save her son.
“They were all caught in the tide,” Lutz said they told her. “They
started helping Joey. The woman started being swept away. He (the companion)
pulled her. There was no way to do both.”
After reaching shore, the travelling companions ran to the beach for help, but
no one dared go into the water, Lutz said.
“They tried to get people to help, but nobody wanted to help,”
she said
Panamanian police did not immediately help search for her son, who went to
Panama alone, Lutz said.
“I felt that there was not immediate response by the police the same
day,” she said.
"When friends tried to call the police, they were very nonchalant about
it,” Lutz told a local television station. “If there was any chance
to rescue him, it was lost."
Lutz said there were no signs warning visitors about the treacherous waters,
where “a lot” of people have died recently.
"I feel bad that there were no signs on the beach, no warning, no lifeguard,
and it is known locally that this beach has taken a lot of people," Lutz
told the station. "A lot of young tourists go to this beach.
"They advertise how everything is beautiful and that the beaches are great,
but the currents are very bad," she said.
Bocas del Toro is an group of remote islands on the northwestern coast of Panama
only recently discovered by international travelers, according to the web site
worldheadquarters.com.
Popular among eco-travelers, the islands along the Caribbean Coast feature
“long sandy deserted beaches” and “unspoiled coral reefs,”
according to the site
Joey’s father and brother both arrived in Costa Rica and are on their
way to Bocas del Toro, where it rained yesterday, Lutz said.
“We want to find him alive or dead,” she said. “If he’s
not alive, we want to bury him properly. We don’t him to stay
in the water.”
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