Perhaps you saw the dramatic photos or video from the nighttime rescue of three people stranded at high tide in a Laguna Beach cove Wednesday.
Now, 20-year-old Giovanni Carlo
Frizzle, who was one of those rescued, has been arrested on suspicion of cocaine possession and being under the influence of blow.
There had been previous reports that two of those rescued were intoxicated. It's unclear from this KTLA/Channel 5 report how Laguna Beach police determined Frizzle was also holding.
According to police, they received a call just before 9 p.m. Wednesday from a man who said he and two “very
intoxicated” friends were trapped on the beach near Seacliff Drive
and Pacific Coast Highway.
They had walked down to Littleman's Cove three hours earlier but got cut off as darkness fell and the tide came in.
In other words, they could not climb out the way they climbed in.
]
Three firefighters rappelled down a 75- to 100-foot cliff, and two
lifeguards who swam around the point to reach the trio. They strapped
the two men and one woman in individual metal stretcher baskets that
were raised up the cliff one at a time.
In all, 40 responders from Laguna Beach Fire, Orange County Fire
Authority, Laguna Beach lifeguards
and U.S. Ocean Safety participated in the two-hour rescue.
The diciest moments came around 10:30 p.m., when the tide peaked at the
height of the rescue
operation, KTLA reports.
Two of those rescued were later treated for exposure and released. The
third refused treatment.
OC Weekly Editor-in-Chief Matt Coker has been engaging, enraging and entertaining readers of newspapers, magazines and websites for decades. He spent the first 13 years of his career in journalism at daily newspapers before “graduating” to OC Weekly in 1995 as the alternative newsweekly’s first calendar editor.