Frank Meza, 70-Year-Old Disqualified Los Angeles Marathon Runner, Found Dead In River

A 70-year-old doctor who was disqualified from the Los Angeles Marathon after officials uncovered evidence that he cheated during the 2019 sprint was found dead in a California river, Thursday.

According to the Los Angeles Police Department, Frank Meza, who set a record time for his age group during this year's L.A. Marathon before being disqualified from the race, was found dead, lying in the shallow waters of Los Angeles River at around 10 a.m. in the Cypress Park area, sources told Eyewitness News. Although authorities did not disclose the official cause of death, they ruled out drowning as a possibility.

The runner registered a record time of 2 hours and 53 minutes after competing in the 2019 race, which was deemed “impossible” since it was more than an hour and 15 minutes ahead of the person in his age group who initially stood second and was declared the winner after Meza's disqualification.

A group of runners who operate a website called Marathon Investigation – tasked with maintaining the fairness and integrity of the races – decided to look into the matter after a number of people voiced their suspicion over Meza’s record-setting time. Marathon investigator Derek Murphy eventually discovered evidence that Meza had left the race course at some point during the sprint.

“What you see is he comes onto the course after being along the sidewalk for an unknown period of time. I looked back six minutes [on the video] and he was never on the portion of the course leading up to the sidewalk so it showed me he didn't run that full part of the course,” he said.

He and the rest of his team deduced that Meza left the course and reentered at a different point.

A further probe unveiled Meza’s history of being disqualified from California marathons in the past. In fact, investigators found that one such 5k (3.1 miles) sprint was covered by him in such a time period that would have broken the world record for that time in his age group.

“After an extensive review... has determined that Dr. Frank Meza violated a number of race rules during the 2019 Skechers Performance Los Angeles Marathon, including re-entering the course from a position other than where he left it,” Marathon organizers said in a statement before disqualifying him, Mail Online reported. “The video evidence is confirmed by a credible eyewitness report and our calculation that Dr. Meza's actual running time for at least one 5K course segment would have had to have been faster than the current 70-74 age group 5K world-record [an impossible feat during a marathon].”

Regardless, Meza maintained that he had simply left the course to find a bathroom and returned at the same point before resuming the race. “I didn't cut the course,” Meza told Los Angeles Times on Monday.

After his death, his wife Tina told The Daily Beast that her husband was devastated by the cheating allegations brought against him. “Running was very important to my husband. He had been running marathons for the last 30 or 40 years. He was very fast, quite fast, and now unfortunately he won’t run marathons any more,” she said.

Meza was a former Loyola High School assistant distance coach and also founded the Aztlan Track Club in 1974.

“This has been a pretty difficult stretch in recent weeks. ‘Doc’ has been a great friend and positive spirit to many in the running community and beyond for decades. This is a tremendous loss. There has been 'much going on' for a recent while regarding Doc, as some of you know. As painful a loss as this is for many of us, we will cherish some great memories of a great person,” editor for the website PepCalTrack.com Rich Gonzalez tweeted following Meza’s death.