In his 16 years on the Los Angeles police dive unit, Sgt. David Mascarenas has answered the call to duty by being lowered into lakes, searching the flanks of piers and scouring the bowels of pipelines.
But on Thursday, Mascarenas splashed into an environment so inhospitable, he could barely see past his mask.
His assignment: Search the gelatinous goo of the La Brea Tar Pits for evidence in an unsolved homicide.
Twice he got stuck in the pudding-like muck, his protective suit filled with oily tar and the constant gas bubbles belching from the depths left him with a light head and burning throat.
"I've been under moving ships, in underwater reservoir sheds ... you name it," Mascarenas said. "This is by far the craziest thing I've ever done."
"It's horrible in there," agreed LAPD Lt. Andrew Neiman. "He's covered with tar. It's a mess."
Mascarenas' dive into the tar pits was part of a joint investigation into a murder case by local and federal law enforcement agencies. Police would not describe nor detail the evidence they were seeking.
But Mascarenas was happy to click off some of the random artifacts he came across during his hourlong hunt for evidence -- cans, bottles, various pieces of mechanical equipment, a train rail and, perhaps most fittingly for the veteran diver, an anchor.
The La Brea Tar Pits are a cluster of dark pools where tar has seeped to the surface for tens of thousands of years. The pits are famous for containing the fossils of Pleistocene animals -- such as saber-tooth cats, dire wolves and mammoths -- that were trapped in the tar, their bones preserved over time.
Mascarenas said he was surprised by the topography of the pit, which he said included protrusions of tar that looked like small mountains.
"The methane gas was pushing up tar in pinnacle-like fashion," Mascarenas said. "I would squeeze the cylindrical columns and they would pop and I heard the gas burp.
"The tar," he said, "went all over my face and arms."
During the dive, he said, he got in a couple of tight spots, once when his fins became stuck to the bottom and another time when his communications line became pinned to a pipe.
"I could not see it or feel the line so I slowly had to run my hands down, trying not to get stuck in the tar," Mascarenas said. "It felt like it was forever and my whole focus to be able to free myself because they weren't going to be able to pull me up from the tether. I had to get out."
Police have been planning the search for weeks.
At 6 a.m. Thursday, personnel with the LAPD's Metropolitan Division, criminal gang homicide unit -- as well as Long Beach police and port police -- gathered in the 5800 block of Wilshire Boulevard.
Authorities deployed heavy equipment, including metal detectors on land and in the tar, high-powered magnets and sonar to map the area. Video cameras were able to focus on possible items of interest.
By 2 p.m., multiple items in the detective's criminal investigation were recovered, showing that police would "go as far as we can to make it as difficult for a suspect to discard evidence," Mascarenas said.
He also said he hoped to see retirement before doing another dive into the tar pits.
Copyright 2013 - Los Angeles Times
McClatchy-Tribune News Service
