A 24-year-old Madera man died at about 1 p.m. Friday in a drowning at Skaggs Bridge Park in Kerman, the Fresno County Sheriff’s Office said.

According to a sheriff’s news release, deputies and EMS personnel responded there at 12:30 p.m. to a report of an unconscious man who had been swimming in the San Joaquin River. Friends of Ricardo Perez Diaz administered CPR until the first responders took over. Diaz was declared dead shortly after 1 p.m.

Sheriff’s spokesman Tony Botti said that Diaz’s friends told deputies that he didn’t know how to swim and wasn’t wearing a life jacket.

While wading in knee-high water, he apparently slipped from a submerged shelf and went under. The friends said that Diaz didn’t resurface for two to three minutes, Botti said.