California man goes missing on vacation, apparently swept over huge Oregon waterfall

A 20-year-old California man is missing, believed to have been swept over a big Oregon waterfall while kayaking.

After five days of searching, the Clackamas County sheriff’s office on Thursday broke its silence on the man’s name, identifying him as Marcelus Angelo Rodriguez of Porterville, in Tulare County.

The report of a kayaker in distress near Willamette Falls came from a 911 caller shortly before 11 p.m. on Saturday, April 12, the sheriff’s office said. Witnesses said the man left the kayak and tried to swim to safety but did not resurface after going over the falls. His hard-shell kayak was found the following morning about 7½ miles downstream.

Willamette Falls, on the Willamette River in Oregon City, is the United States’ second biggest waterfall by volume, after Niagara. It has a drop of about 50 feet.

Rodriguez was reportedly not an experienced kayaker, and he was not familiar with the river. He had arrived with his family Saturday evening for a vacation; they were staying in a rented floating house about half a mile upstream from the falls.

He went out on the river alone and apparently without a life jacket. Among the witnesses who saw him swept away were unhoused residents of a riverside encampment, the sheriff’s office said.

Signs along the river warn of the falls, but at night — even with Saturday’s full moon — they may not have been visible.

A Clackamas County sheriff’s deputy told Portland TV station KOIN that the buoys that mark the edge of the falls during part of the year are not in place because of the debris brought by spring runoff.

Those familiar with the river say the falls would be dangerous even for a very experienced kayaker, because of the long drop and the rocks at the bottom.

During the search, two bodies have been found along that stretch of the river, neither of them Rodriguez’s.