Update: Woman's Body Recovered after Jump from Coronado Bridge

Updated at 9:52 p.m. June 19, 2012

A woman’s body was recovered from San Diego Bay after a reported fall from the Coronado bridge, authorities said Tuesday night.

The California Highway Patrol is investigating the incident, and the county Medical Examiner’s Office was on the scene, according to a San Diego Harbor Police officer who spoke to Patch by phone.

Jorge Cruz, a driver heading toward his downtown San Diego home after a day at the beach with his wife and three relatives, said he witnessed the apparent suicide by what he thought was a man.

“I’ve never seen anything like that before,” Cruz told Patch in a phone interview. “He definitely went over. My wife said she may have seen his shoes [as he fell].”

Cruz, 26, said he was a little past midspan when he saw a car stopped on the north side of the bridge with its hood open.

A white or Hispanic person with dark hair was standing on the edge, Cruz said, and he went over the side—leading Cruz at first to think that the victim was reaching over for something.

But he later thought the person went over purposefully.

Cruz said he recalls thinking: “I don’t know if I really saw what I saw.”

But after he drove his car onto northbound Interstate 5 and his wife used a zoom lens to see that nothing on the bridge could have broken the fall, “that’s when I felt an ugly feeling inside.”

Cruz, a Jamba Juice manager in San Diego, said he was driving his wife, two nieces and sister-in-law when he spotted the car pointed against traffic on the other side of the bridge.

About two or three minutes after the fall, Cruz spoke to a 911 operator, who asked for a description and his contact information.

Calls to the California Highway Patrol were not immediately returned.

The Tuesday involving a possible suicide attempt.

The bridge, with a 200-foot clearance for ships, was closed in both directions about 4:25 a.m. Tuesday after someone threatened to jump, according to the California Highway Patrol and San Diego police.

The man was taken into custody shortly before 7 a.m., a CHP dispatcher said. Officers began to reopen lanes just after 7 a.m., a dispatcher said.