Body pulled from Sacramento River identified as tow truck driver from Pioneer Bridge crash

A body that was recovered in the Sacramento River near the Pocket Thursday morning has been identified by the Yolo County Sheriff’s Office as the tow truck driver whose vehicle plunged into the river last month.

The body of Shalvinesh Sharma, 40, of Sacramento was pulled out of the river just before 9 a.m. near Stan’s Yolo Marina and across from Garcia Bend Park after a park ranger reported a body floating downstream, Yolo County Sheriff’s Office spokesman Sgt. Matt Davis said in a news release. An autopsy is pending, officials said.

Sharma was an occupant in the tow truck that was pushed off the Pioneer Bridge on March 26 after a collision with a tractor-trailer. In the car, family members said, was his wife, Roselyn. The Fijian Indian couple were the owners of Justin’s Towing.

Recovery efforts were stifled for several days afterward due to swift currents. Fire officials at the scene of last month’s crash said the occupants of the tow truck were presumed to have died upon impact given the height of the fall from the bridge.

Sacramento Fire Department Battalion Chief Jonathan Burgess said Thursday that only one body had been found, although crews were aware that another body was missing.

Kevin Saeturn was fishing with a friend along a trail south of Garcia Bend Park when the two of them started to see police and hear sirens.

“We just saw a boat floating around ... then all of a sudden two Sacramento cops, they were here behind us,” Saeturn said. “I thought we did something wrong, but we didn’t. And then they told us there was a dead body floating around, they were trying to capture it.”

Saeturn said he saw the boat, and police told him the boat was following the body downstream, but he did not see the body itself.

“I told the cops, ‘That’s crazy.’ I’d never seen anything like that before.”

The discovery came as a private salvage crew was preparing to recover the vehicle that’s sat under 30 feet of rushing water for nearly three weeks, the California Highway Patrol’s South Sacramento office said in a press release Wednesday night.

Family members arranged with their insurance company to contract a Bay Area salvage company, Global Diving and Salvage, to send a barge equipped to handle the recovery operation, CHP said. Recovery efforts could start as early as Friday, CHP said.

The tow truck crashed into the river about 8:30 p.m. March 26 after a collision with a big rig. Search and rescue operations by Sacramento and West Sacramento fire personnel were called off within two hours. The occupants of the tow truck were presumed dead upon impact due to the height of the Pioneer Bridge, which connects the two cities via the Capital City Freeway, and efforts transitioned to recovery rather than rescue.

Since then, several local agencies — aided by the Coast Guard and crews with Solano County Sheriff’s Office and Solano County Office of Emergency Services — have conducted operations to locate the tow truck under 30 feet of water. The process has stretched out over more than two weeks in an off-and-on fashion, as officials have reported several times that the Sacramento River’s current was running too fast for a safe recovery operation, which would require divers.

Meanwhile, the Sharmas’ loved ones await closure. A memorial of candles, flowers and keepsakes has been growing at the end of the Mill Street Pier in West Sacramento since the evening after the collision.

Dozens of people spent hours watching from that pier on the Saturday following the incident as a five-boat team searched the river for the tow truck. That day’s search was unsuccessful, but the truck was located two days later on April 1 using sonar technology, CHP said.

Wednesday’s news release was the first official statement by CHP that named Justin’s Towing as the suspected company with which the submerged truck is affiliated. CHP is the main investigating agency for the incident.

This story was originally published April 11, 2019 at 4:38 PM.