Crime & Safety

Body Found in Creek Near Where Police Say Novato Man Jumped in on Dec. 24

Marin County Coroner is investigating whether body found in Corte Madera Creek Monday night was the 20-year-old Novato man who allegedly fled a traffic stop by jumping into the creek on Christmas Eve.

Three weeks after a Novato man allegedly fled a traffic stop in Kentfield by jumping into nearby Corte Madera Creek, authorities pulled a body from the creek Monday night just a few hundred yards from where the Dec. 24 traffic stop occurred, authorities said.

The body has not yet been identified, but the Marin County Sheriff's Coroner's Division is investigating if it is Anthony Donelson, the 23-year-old man who has been missing since the early morning hours of Christmas Eve. Ross Police said Donelson had been stopped on suspicion of drunken driving on Sir Francis Drake Blvd. at College Ave. but immediately fled down College before jumping a fence and leaping into the creek.

Police said they followed Donelson as he swam away until they reached a point they couldn’t follow him. In the days after Donelson went missing, authorities conducted multiple searches of the area, using sonar equipment to comb the waters. His family also issued a $5,000 reward to help find him. The search continued all the way out through Greenbrae and into the bay, Ross Police Chief Erik Masterson said.

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Marin County Sheriff's Lt. Doug Pittman said deputies and Ross Police responded to a report of a body being seen in the creek at around 5:45 p.m. Monday just south of Stadium Ave., which ends at a pedestrian overpass of the creek leading to the campus of Kent Middle School.

Deputies and police located the body beneath the surface of the water and called in the Sheriff’s dive team and Kentfield Fire crews.

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Pittman said the body was not identified nor was the gender determined. He said authorities didn’t examine the body, as the dive team placed it into a body bag below the surface of the water, lifted it out of the water using a ladder from a Kentfield Fire truck and immediately transported it to the coroner’s office.

Donelson grew up in Fairfax and San Anselmo and was living in Novato. He graduated from Sir Francis Drake High School.


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