Mesquite Man Trying To Walk Home Drowns In Swift Water
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MESQUITE (CBSDFW.COM) - Severe weather turned deadly in Mesquite when swift waters swept away a man trying to walk home.
74-year-old Clyde Duran was a regular customer at the Exxon on the corner of Forney Road and S Town E Boulevard almost every day at the gas station's taqueria or the Subway.
This time before he left, employees say they tried to get him to wait for the weather to clear up, but he insisted on trying to make it home.
A swift water rescue team of firefighters found Duran's body in South Mesquite Creek not far from the field he was trying to cross to get home. It's exactly the outcome Patti Brinson and others hoped to prevent.
"He was like family," said Patti Brinson, who works at the gas station.
Brinson saw Duran almost every day at the Exxon where he walked to and from home. He had stopped by the Subway in the morning when employees pleaded with him not to go back out in the storm.
"And an officer even came in a little bit, and he's like, just wait, just hold on, just relax, just wait 'til the rain slows down, and then it did slow down, and he did leave," Brinson said.
But even as the rain slowed, high waters moved fast in the nearby creek.
"After he left, my co-worker, she went out the back door to take out some garbage, and she started yelling, Patti, Patti, and I come running, and... 'cause you know that scream whenever somebody's in trouble," Brinson said.
That co-worker told Brinson Duran disappeared from the field in the distance, so they called for help. Police found his body downstream near a pipe after the waters receded.
"This was a matter of independence. He wouldn't take a ride from no one. He was just an independent man," Brinson said.
Employees said Duran told them he suffered from glaucoma, so they believe he likely had trouble seeing even though he had walked this path many times.
