A body was pulled from a California river three days after a man celebrating his 25th birthday drowned while using a waterfall as a waterslide, police said.

The body, found Wednesday, is believed to be that of Omar Chaar, who "got sucked into a whirlpool" Sunday, Donna Nelson, of the Nevada County Sheriff's Department, told the Daily News Thursday.

The Elk Grove man and his friends went to the Nevada City attraction during a hike, Nelson said.

They used a waterfall and slippery rocks as a "big slide" into Emerald Pool in the Yuba River, she said. But Chaar went in the "wrong direction" and got caught in the deluge, she said.

It was too "dangerous" to send a sheriff's department diver right away, so authorities had to wait for a swift water diving team, Nelson said.

Still, Chaar's family couldn't understand how authorities took so long to find their son, noting search efforts totaled just eight hours over two days, Fox 40 reported.

"Where is he?" they shouted on camera, clearly distraught, on Monday.

"We couldn't celebrate his birthday," his father, Ramez Chaar, told the Sacramento Bee. "The cake is still waiting for him. It doesn't look good."

Omar Chaar, a biochemistry student at California State University Sacramento, had spent the day before the trip studying for an exam to get into optometry school.


Chaar and his buddies hiked every weekend, but "his friends could do nothing at all" once Chaar hit the water, his dad said.

"I don't know what happened, how it happened," friend and witness Obaid Rasooli said quietly before bursting into tears. "He went up and down a couple of times and then he was gone."

Chaar's death was not the first at the popular thrill-seeking site.

At least two other people have died in the Emerald Pool, including a Sacramento man in 1984 and a Nevada woman in 2003, according to archives.