SAN DIEGO (CBS 8) - A dead man was found floating in a rain-swollen waterway near Gillespie Field Tuesday.
The unidentified body was drifting to the north in Forester Creek in El Cajon when a passer-by spotted it shortly before 11 a.m., according to police.
A short time later, sheriff's deputies found the corpse lodged in foliage in a stretch of the stream alongside Prospect Avenue in Santee, just west of Cuyamaca Street, said Richard Smith, acting chief of the Santee Fire Department.
A dive team from the San Diego Fire-Rescue Department was called in to assist and had the body out of the creek by 11:45 a.m., Smith said.
According to the Santee Fire Department, the body was a male in his 40s and was likely in the river for at least a week.
As of this report, it is unclear if the weather was a factor in this incident. El Cajon police said they had previously received reports of a body spotted floating in the river, but officers couldn’t find a body until this morning.
The county Medical Examiner's Office was summoned to take custody of the body for identification and autopsy purposes.