O.C. Man Falls Into Stream, Dies in Hawaii

HILO, Hawaii —  A Corona del Mar man drowned after he fell into a stream and was swept over a waterfall, Hawaii County police said Saturday.

The victim, identified as Paul Gregory Feit, 23, was pronounced dead after falling into the Wailuku River in Hilo on Friday, police said.

A witness told police that Feit and two of his friends had been swimming in the river on the east side of the island of Hawaii, about 200 miles from Honolulu, before the 1:35 p.m. accident. Feit apparently fell into the stream after he and his friends had finished swimming, police said.

According to the witness, Feit surfaced and went over the waterfall, but was apparently pulled underwater again by the currents.

Thomas Feit, the victim’s father, said his son was in Hawaii vacationing with several college friends.

The father said his son’s friends called him Friday at the family’s Corona del Mar home to explain what happen, but the circumstances remained clouded. “To tell you the truth, I’m still a little confused about what happened,” he said.

“Apparently he hit his head on something when he went over the waterfall,” the father said. “If that had something to do with the accident, we don’t know.”

A coroner’s autopsy Saturday determined that Feit had drowned.

Thomas Feit said he hopes to get all the facts of the accident when he sits down and talks to his son’s friends, who are flying back to the mainland to bring the family Paul’s belongings.

Paul Feit graduated from Loyola Marymount University in Westchester last year with a degree in finance and had been working as a loan officer for Wells Fargo Bank in Huntington Beach, his father said.