The lifeless body of A.F.C., a 28-year-old Colombian who worked as a doctor for 061, was located at around 5:15 pm yesterday by GEAS divers in s’Ullal de na Coloms, also known as the Cueva de la luz, after he disappeared on Saturday afternoon and a major search operation was activated to locate him. The doctor disappeared the day before yesterday, at around 3 p.m., in this enclave on the coast of Sant Mateu, where he was hiking with two of his friends. At one point, the young man decided to jump into the sea through this dangerous opening in the rock “suddenly” and “without warning” his two companions on the route, who at that moment had gone down to the information sign that warns of the danger of descending to sea level.
The young man “took off his pants, put on something, apparently some booties and jumped into the water,” sources close to the case told this newspaper.
His companions reproached him for his recklessness due to the danger of this enclave and tried to rescue him, but without success. After many unsuccessful attempts, they decided that one should stay with the young doctor, to keep him alert and awake, while the other tried to look for help, but got lost along the way. Meanwhile, the friend who had stayed in the cave continued to encourage him, but as the sun went down and the temperature dropped, A.F.C. gradually lost consciousness, probably due to hypothermia. Until he was finally lost track of.
Conditions of “hell”
Since Saturday at 18.25 pm, when firefighters received the notice, a large operation has been looking for the young man. The vertical rescue unit of the firefighters moved with five personnel, a GRV vehicle and another light vehicle and, upon finding that he was not inside the cave, a search device was activated in collaboration with Maritime Rescue, which began to make beats with a helicopter, and the Specialist Group in Underwater Activities (GEAS) of the Civil Guard, whose members were the ones who finally found the body under the sea, more than a day after he jumped into the sea from the cave.
The cave was “hell”
Work was interrupted on Saturday night due to bad weather. To such an extent that the interior of the cave was “a living hell”as the same sources told this newspaper. No one could enter or leave s’Ullal de na Coloms because of the strong waves. In fact, the bad weather conditions forced yesterday morning, when the operation was reactivated, to move the rescue material by land to act from inside the cave. In addition, two agents of the Greim (Mountain Rescue and Intervention Group) and several patrols of the Civil Guard joined the operation, and the Local Police of Sant Antoni cut off the access. The firefighters and the Consell de Eivissa, meanwhile, asked citizens to stay away from the area so as not to hinder the search for the young man. At the close of this edition, the rescue services were trying to recover the body, but the bad state of the sea made the tasks difficult.
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