Photo: Subhradeep Dutta Facebook
Subhradeep Dutta, of the Minneapolis suburb Edina, was visiting the popular national park outside San Francisco on Tuesday and was walking along the trail path when the massive tree fell down, according to areleasefrom the Marin County Sheriff’s Office.
Dutta was with his sister, who was hospitalized, and her boyfriend, who escaped without injury, National Park Service spokesman Charles Strickfaden toldKPIX.
Sister Swagata Dutta said Subhradeep was visiting her in the Bay Area for the holidays, and that the group heard the sound of rocks falling just seconds before disaster struck.
Muir Woods National Monument.Carol M. Highsmith/Buyenlarge/Getty Images
She said she noticed “something was very wrong” after she called out for her brother and received no response.
“We just happened to be at the wrong time at the wrong place,” she said.
“These were visitors exactly where they were allowed to be,” he said. “It just seems to be an unfortunate, tragic event.”
The tree that struck Subhradeep was 200 feet tall and more than four feet in diameter, according to theAssociated Press.
Its large size initially made hiker Alex Shepard, who was hiking with his mom when it fell, think it was an earthquake.
“I had never heard a sound like that,” he told KPIX. “We were just finishing our hike when we heard this colossal noise — maybe 250, 300 feet away — and watched a huge redwood fall from the hillside down to the trail below.”
Dutta was a firmware engineer with Seagate Technology, and had received a master’s degree from the University of Colorado Boulder in 2018, according to hisLinkedInprofile.
source: people.com
