A prominent NOTL custom home builder is dead after he went swimming in the Niagara River on Tuesday night.
Kekoo Gatta, 60, didn’t return home after going for a swim in the river off his docked boat near the mouth of the river.
Gatta was the founder and owner of Gatta Homes, a luxury development company based mainly in Niagara-on-the-Lake for more than 30 years.
“Officers arrived on scene to learn that a resident of the home, a 60-year-old man, had gone swimming in the Niagara River off his docked boat,” Const. Phil Gavin with Niagara Regional Police said in response to questions from The Lake Report.
“When his family did not hear from him for an extended time, they became concerned for his welfare,” Gavin said.
Police refused to identify Gatta, but his family confirmed his death Wednesday morning in a telephone call.
Emergency crews were called to the area of Gatta’s Ricardo Street home just after 9:30 p.m. Tuesday, police said.
Search efforts included help from the NOTL and St. Catharines fire departments, Niagara police and the Canadian Coast Guard.
Members of the police marine search unit located his body around 11:20 p.m., about 25 to 30 feet from where he went missing.
Foul play is not suspected, police said.
Besides being a well-known builder, Gatta had been a coach with the Brock University junior wrestling team.
His children Zubin, Cyrus and Farrantina have all been competitive wrestlers.
Wrestling “kept me off the streets,” Kekoo Gatta told The Lake Report in a 2022 story about Zubin winning gold at the Canada Summer Games.
“It was a poor man’s sport. Growing up, we had no money, so the only thing you needed was a pair of shorts and a T-shirt and lots of sweat,” he said.
Gatta said his high school wrestling coach was sensitive to the needs of lower-income students.
His coach, Tom Sills, used to pay for their tournaments and the occasional trip to McDonald’s when Gatta attended Thorold Secondary School in the early 1980s.
In his final two years of high school, Gatta trained under former Olympic wrestler Richard Deschatelets Sr., who started the Brock University wrestling program.
“We had no money. So it was really good — family — belonging to a certain wrestling family,” Gatta said.
The sport also taught him some valuable life lessons that he said he carried with him into the building industry.
“I give it all to wrestling,” he said.
