His body was found early Wednesday morning in Marina Del Rey
TWM is saddened to report that former WWE superstar Shad Gaspard has been found dead.
Shad Gaspard, 39, was swimming with his 10-year-old son before both were pulled out with the rip current while swimming on late Sunday Afternoon at the newly reopened Marina Del Ray Beach at Venice Beach, California.
This was confirmed by Los Angeles County Fire’s lifeguard division.
‘The father unfortunately got pushed down by a wave as they were getting pulled out of the current. The lifeguard rescued and grabbed the boy, the son, and tried to grab the father as well.
‘He ended up getting pushed down by a wave and we couldn’t find him and we immediately started with our rescue boats, called in additional lifeguards to search that location of his dad.’
Kenichi Haskett, Los Angeles County Fire Dept Lifeguard Division speaking with DailyMail.com
During the rescue, another large wave had crashed down and Shad went missing after directing emergency crews to save his son. L.A Fire department and various other lifeguards aided the search and rescue, but Los Angeles officials had suspended the search and scaled down to just one boat on patrol.
At 1:46AM PDT/9:46AM BST, a body was found which later was confirmed to be Shad Gaspard by Los Angeles lifeguards.
Shad was best known for the WWE run between 2006 and 2010 as part of Cryme Tyme with JTG. The tag team would go on to be highly popular in the developmental territory and on the main roster. The team was released in September 2007 for unknown reasons.
After a year on the independents, both would return on March 31, 2008 on RAW, occasionally teaming with John Cena. The team would continue until after Wrestlemania 26, when Shad would turn on JTG.
The two had a strap match at Extreme Rules 2010, but afterwards Gaspard was sent to FCW while JTG stayed on Smackdown.
Shad was later released, in November 2010. He would continue wrestling for a short time, until 2014, making various appearances for NWA Pro.
He most recently performed stunts for the blockbuster movie “Birds of Prey” and has had numerous appearances in films and other media.
The thoughts of the entire TWM team are with the Gaspard family at this time.