“On the late evening of November 8, 1958, Charles Wetzel drove his 1952 Buick down North Main Street in Riverside, California. He listened to the radio and enjoyed the ride as he approached an area where the road was often submerged by the Santa Ana River. There, as usual, the water flooded the lowest part of the pavement, so Wetzel had to slow down.
Around the same time, strong interference began to be heard from the radio. Wetzel tried to switch to another station, but only white noise was heard. He was about to turn it off when he saw a road sign warning of a flooded area. Before he could read the warning text, however, something much more unexpected caught his eye. A six-foot-tall [~ 1.8 m] creature jumped into the middle of the road. Wetzel hit the brakes. The creature just stood and looked at him.
He had a "round scary head," Wetzel told reporters from the Los Angeles Examiner, where the story was first published on November 9, 1958. According to an eyewitness, the creature had a face with a beak-like mouth and fluorescent shiny eyes - it did not notice the ears and nose. In both the original interview and a 1982 interview with Loren Coleman, Wetzel emphasized that the creature's skin was "scaly like leaves, but definitely not feathers." Scaly humanoid?
Wetzel was shocked by the sight of the stranger and for a few moments they froze, looking at each other on the road. Then, without warning, the creature walked over to the car and began scratching the windshield. It climbed onto the hood, making a "gurgling sound" mixed with "shrill screams."
Frightened, Wetzel fumbled for the.22 pistol he always carried with him. He raised it in warning, but the creature ignored it and continued to scratch at the glass. Then Wetzel decided to press the gas pedal. When the car pulled away, the creature fell onto the road, hitting the car. Wetzel drove off, leaving him lying in the road.
Wetzel immediately contacted the local police, where he spoke about the incident. The police, taking his word for it, quickly brought in several Bloodhounds and headed for the area. They carefully searched the road and the area along the river, but could not find any trace of the alleged creature. The only tangible signs that something had collided with Wetzel's car were some marks on the windshield and a strip of rubbed grease from the bottom of the oil sump, hinting that the man had indeed run over something.
In an extensive interview with Lauren Coleman, he elaborated on some of the details. Among them was a specific description of the creature's legs. According to a summary in Coleman's book, Mysterious America, Wetzel reported that "the creature's legs came out from the sides, not the bottom," and that it also had "incredibly long arms."
If Wetzel's story is true, then this appears to be one of the earliest sightings of scaled humanoids in the modern era. Although some Bigfoot researchers, such as John Green, included this encounter in their books on sasquatch, Wetzel made it clear that the creature's skin was more "scaly" rather than covered in fur. The strange details about the beak-like mouth and the missing nose are also very peculiar, making it a separate category for it.
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As unthinkable as the creature was, Wetzel was not the only one to report a mysterious encounter near the Santa Ana River. The next night, another motorist driving along the same road reported seeing a large, dark "something" run across the road. Was it the same monster? We will never know. " / Lyle Blackburn, Lizard Man (2013), "Riverside's Reptoid" - excerpt from Chapter 6.