The man who was killed by a shark while boogie boarding off the coast of San Luis Obispo on Christmas Eve has been identified as 42-year-old Tomas Butterfield of Sacramento.
While the San Luis Obispo County Sheriff-Coroner is conducting an autopsy and has not released his name, State Parks confirmed his identity to the San Luis Obispo Tribune.
The victim's uncle, Grant Butterfield, told the paper that Tomas Butterfield had been living in downtown Sacramento while working for his father at a medical laboratory equipment repair company in the city,
According to his uncle, Butterfield was visiting his mother in Morro Bay last week for the holidays. He went boogie boarding alone the morning of Dec. 24 at the The Pit area of Morro Strand State Beach, north of Morro Rock.
Grant Butterfield told the paper he doesn’t know what happened during Tomas Butterfield's last moments in the water.
A woman surfing in the area saw an empty boogie board and found Butterfield face down in the water at approximately 10:40 a.m. By the time medical personnel arrived on the scene, he was already dead.
A police spokesperson told the Tribune earlier this week that the death was "definitely, clearly a shark attack," likely involving a great white.
Tomas Butterfield's brother, Ben, who had arrived at Morro Bay for the planned Christmas family gathering, and his mom, Maria, went searching for Tomas and saw "a gaggle of people" at the beach, Grant Butterfield said.
"(They) thought the worst, and it was the worst, obviously," the victim's uncle said.
Butterfield, who was unmarried, loved fishing, boogie boarding and golfing, his uncle explained to the paper.
"Tomas was very quiet and had kind of a wry sense of humor," he said. "If you could get a full-throated laugh out of him, you were a winner."
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