A California father who vanished after Super Bowl Sunday plans to relax at home was discovered dead days later in a creek behind Levi’s Stadium, and investigators are now probing the case as a possible homicide.
Authorities found the body of 44-year-old Thomas Simpkins in San Tomas Aquino Creek near the Santa Clara stadium roughly six days after he was last heard from.
Simpkins had spent Super Bowl Sunday at a friend’s barbecue miles away from the venue and returned home by Uber around 9 p.m., his sister Brandi Stroud told a Bay Area NBC outlet.
The strange case has left family members searching for answers about how Simpkins traveled miles from his home to the waterway behind the stadium.
Simpkins never attended the game and had no known plans to go near the stadium that night.
“When he got home, we have no idea who picked him up or how he got all the way to Levi’s Stadium,” Stroud said.
“I don’t believe that my brother just decided to throw himself into a creek. I don’t have any answers when it comes down to really what happened to him.”
Stroud had been texting with her brother earlier that evening. Simpkins told her he had returned home after the game ended and planned to relax for the night. Family members never heard from him again.
Concern escalated when Simpkins failed to show up for work at a Palo Alto restaurant where he was employed.
His 19-year-old son went to the restaurant to check on him and learned his father had missed his shift.nThe family began treating Simpkins as a missing person.
Stroud traveled from Oregon to the Bay Area to search for her brother. Days passed without leads until a stranger reached out through Facebook.
The woman sent Stroud audio from a police scanner reporting that a body had been found in the creek near Levi’s Stadium on February 14.
“I wasn’t aware that there had even been a body to be recovered behind Levi’s Stadium until some random lady on Facebook sent me a link,” Stroud said.
Stroud contacted the medical examiner’s office and identified her brother using a large tattoo of his last name across his back.
Several key items were missing from the scene. Stroud said Simpkins’ wallet and cellphone were not found with his body when authorities recovered him from the creek.
Police informed the family they are investigating the death as a possible homicide. Officials have not released a cause of death.
A medical examiner is conducting tests that could take weeks before investigators receive definitive results.
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Autopsies that include toxicology screenings for drugs and alcohol can require one to six months before final reports are issued.
Stroud also voiced frustration about what she described as delays during the early days of the search.
She said multiple law enforcement agencies initially passed the case between jurisdictions before San Jose police assumed control of the investigation.
Simpkins leaves behind three stepchildren and one biological son. According to his sister, he had also been going through a divorce.
The grim discovery came during a weekend when violence erupted across several cities tied to Super Bowl celebrations.
In nearby San Jose, two cousins were shot to death early on Super Bowl Sunday in the downtown entertainment district near San Pedro Square.
Police identified the victims as 29-year-old Raymond Aguirre and 37-year-old Nickolas Amador Banuelos.
Investigators believe the pair became involved in an altercation shortly before the shooting. San Jose police later announced an arrest in the case.
Family members demanded accountability after the killings. “We definitely want justice for them. They were way too young to be taken from all of us,” Aguirre’s mother Juanita Casillas said.
“He was loved so much by everybody, you know,” Aguirre’s father Fernando Aguirre added.
Violence tied to Super Bowl gatherings also erupted across the country. In North Philadelphia, a verbal dispute inside a bar after the game escalated into gunfire that left a 29-year-old man critically wounded.
Police reported the shooting occurred shortly before 2 a.m. inside a bar along the 2500 block of North 2nd Street.
Investigators said the victim argued with two men before one suspect pulled a gun and fired multiple rounds.
The man was struck at least twice and rushed to a nearby hospital before being transferred to another medical center where he remained in critical condition.
Authorities in Texas also arrested five young men accused of firing guns into the air in a Fort Worth neighborhood on Super Bowl Sunday.
Residents called 911 after hearing gunshots and reporting bullets passing close to homes. Officer Cynthia Wood described the danger during a department statement.
“So we had several citizens that called in saying that they were in the area, and they could hear the bullets pass by them,” Wood said. “They’re out there thinking it’s for fun that they’re just going to be out here shooting in the air, but those bullets come down, and they end up somewhere.”
“It appears that they were just out trying to shoot into the air, which is very dangerous,” Wood added. “Those bullets can end up in somebody’s home, somebody’s car, somebody walking by.”
Police obtained a license plate number connected to the suspects’ vehicle and broadcast the information to officers in the area.
“They relayed that information to the officers that were in the area and those officers were able to detain them safely and take them into custody,” Wood said.
Another deadly case unfolded in Charlotte, North Carolina, where authorities charged 23-year-old Nasani Raley with murder after a Super Bowl Sunday shooting.
Police said Jordan Davis, 22, suffered a gunshot wound to the head during a struggle over a firearm.
The shooting occurred along Timber Hollow Drive near Central Avenue shortly after 2 p.m. on Feb. 8.
Paramedics rushed Davis to the hospital where he later died from his injuries.
Raley remained at the scene when officers arrived and was taken into custody after investigators interviewed her.
