Teen injures spinal cord in beach dive

A Santa Rosa boy fractured his spinal cord when he dove into shallow ocean water at Pinnacle Gulch Beach near Bodega Bay Sunday afternoon, a Sonoma County sheriff’s sergeant said.

The teen was wading in the ocean with three friends when he dove head first over an incoming wave around 4:15 p.m., sheriff’s Sgt. Spencer Crum.

The water behind the wave was shallower than the boy thought, and he injured his neck and spinal cord when his head struck the surface beneath the water, Crum said.

Friends and bystanders pulled the boy out of the water. The boy lost feeling in the lower part of his body and was unable to move, Crum said.

He was treated at the scene for a spinal cord injury and was then flown by the sheriff’s helicopter to Santa Rosa Memorial Hospital, where he was diagnosed with a fracture in his spinal cord, Crum said.

=