Jinting Guo, aged 35, was last seen alive by his wife at 9am on 19 October 2023, having dropped his son at school earlier that morning. He never returned to collect the boy at the end of the school day and did not come home.
His car was subsequently found at a carpark on Terrace Road in Titahi Bay, a location well known to local divers. The back of the vehicle contained empty dive gear bags and a towel, and diving equipment was discovered in a neighbouring bay. Despite searches in the days that followed, Guo's body was never recovered. Police referred his disappearance to the coroner in February 2024, having formed reasonable grounds to believe he had died, and an inquiry into his death was opened.
On 1 April 2025, two divers found a tibia, or shin bone, on the seabed at Rocky Bay. Coroner Rachael Schmidt-McCleave confirmed that DNA testing established the bone belonged to Guo. A forensic pathologist who examined the tibia found no injuries on it and was unable to determine a cause of death from that evidence alone.
"I find that Jinting Guo died between 19 and 23 October 2023 in the sea off Rocky Bay, Titahi Bay, Porirua. The cause of his death was most likely due to drowning in accidental circumstances as a result of a mishap while freediving alone," Schmidt-McCleave said.
"Apart from the tibia bone, Mr Guo's body is missing and presumed irrecoverable," she said.
*Not thought to be missing at first*
Guo's wife did not immediately raise the alarm when he failed to return home. The coroner noted that she had initially assumed he was working, studying, or had gone for a dive. She rang police on 22 October to report him missing after seeking advice from the Chinese Embassy. Police attributed the delay to his partner's lack of English.
The coroner also heard from Paula Drane, owner of the Dive Wellington store on Marine Parade in Mana. Drane told police she had seen Guo the day before he disappeared, when he visited the store to collect dive gear he kept there. He mentioned that he planned to dive either that day or the following one and told her he would not go alone. That Saturday, he failed to appear for a dive he had booked.
A member of the public found a dive float along the Titahi Bay foreshore the day after Guo went missing. Police seized the items and later confirmed they had belonged to him.
*Police deemed Guo unlikely to have survived*
As part of the coronial inquiry, police submitted a survivability report. Schmidt-McCleave summarised its findings: "That report deducted that, on the facts available, Mr Guo had most likely parked his vehicle at Terrace Road on the morning of 19 October 2023 and gone freediving alone somewhere along the nearby coastline."
"It was likely that, if Mr Guo was still in the sea on the morning of 23 October 2023 when SAR were notified, he had been in the water for at least 96 hours. Survivability based on statistics for water temperature and time is likely to be about 30 hours only given a water temperature of 13-15C. If Mr Guo had remained adrift and afloat in the sea at that location, it is highly unlikely that he would have survived for more than 20 hours."
Several searches of the area were conducted in the subsequent days, but nothing of interest was located. The search was formally suspended on 5 January 2024, after authorities concluded that further searching would not be likely to locate Guo alive.
*Coroner reminds people not to dive alone*
Coroner Schmidt-McCleave made no specific recommendations in her findings, but used the occasion to reinforce advice from Water Safety New Zealand: always dive with a buddy, maintain constant watch on one another, and use a one-up, one-down system.
