SOLANA BEACH, CALIF. — Ray Montana was on his way Saturday to visit his family in Oceanside when he felt drawn to the spot here where a 66-year-old triathlete was killed a day earlier by a marauding shark.
"I know the pain his family must be feeling," said Montana, 20, a marketing major at San Diego State, as he laid a small bouquet of palm leaves at an impromptu memorial near the lifeguard station.
There is something about a violent death at the beach, Montana and others said, that seems so tragic, so wrong -- particularly when the victim represented the local ideal of fitness and athleticism.
Dave Martin, a retired veterinarian, had lived in Solana Beach since 1970. He trained hard in the swimming-biking-running regimen and remained fit, lean and tanned.
He was swimming about 150 yards offshore early Friday when he was bitten by what is believed to have been a great white shark. Pulled from the water by fellow swimmers, he died within minutes from massive bleeding from gashes on both thighs.
On Saturday, many beachgoers said they were still in shock over his death.
"The beach is a place of helping, of renewal, where people come to feel better about themselves, not of death," said seascape artist Linda List, 45, as she walked barefoot in the wet sand a few dozen yards from where Martin was pronounced dead.
A note attached to one of the memorial bouquets said simply, "You were the kindest, most compassionate man I have ever known." Many of the bouquets were from strangers.
For the most part, the public obeyed an advisory posted along an eight-mile stretch from Torrey Pines to South Carlsbad to stay out of the water. Crowds were thinner than expected. At midday, few swimmers were in the water.
Martin's death and the possibility of other sharks lurking offshore dominated conversations in the beach/surf hangouts along U.S. 101: Naked Cafe in Solana Beach, Pannikin coffee shop in Leucadia and the famed Pipes in Cardiff-by-the-Sea.
"It was fate; it was just Dave's time," said David Hilliard, 24, a ocal artist, surfer and computer technician.
A friend offered a novel take: "A bear kills a guy at Big Bear, a shark kills a guy at Solana Beach, both in the same week," said Glen Forest, 45, a carpenter. "There's a strange vibe out there."
Ray "Riptide" Barrios, a triathlete from Sherman Oaks who was bicycling with a friend, said he called his mother to assure her that he would be careful in the water.
