**Update
CORPUS CHRISTI — A 36-year-old man who died this week while collecting golf balls underwater in a golf course hazard accidentally drowned, according to a preliminary report by the Nueces County Medical Examiner's Office.
Police originally said Jose Angel Castro reported chest pain earlier in the day and may have died of a heart attack, but Nueces County Medical Examiner Dr. Ray Fernandez said Castro did not suffer any injuries outside of drowning.
"He may have had some indigestion or heartburn or something like that, but we didn't find evidence of a heart attack," Fernandez said.
Castro was diving for balls with his male cousin in a long, narrow water hazard that hugs a dogleg bend on the course's fourth hole, police said. Castro's cousin started looking for him about 1:30 p.m. Wednesday after he noticed that Castro did not come up for air for a few minutes.
A police diver found the man at about 3:30 p.m. in about eight feet of water, and Castro was pronounced dead at the scene.
Castro was carrying about 12 pounds of weights and was wearing a bulky wet suit, both of which may have trapped him, Fernandez said.
"It doesn't take long to drown," he said. "If someone loses oxygen for more than (five minutes), they're facing death or irreversible brain damage."
Castro lived in Houston and was from Papantla in Mexico's state of Veracruz, an employee of Guardian Funeral Home said. Castro was working for a golf-ball retrieval contractor based in Yoakum.
(Caller-Times) | 
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