Diver missing in Mississippi

[jasondbaker]

Minneapolis Star Tribune:

A 21-year-old man was missing and feared dead Sunday after scuba diving with friends in the Mississippi River off Hidden Falls Regional Park in St. Paul.

Ramsey County Sheriff's Lt. Ron Petrusson said the man was "drift diving" with four others who were all holding a rope and searching in the murky mid-river current for a submerged car they knew was there. Apparently the rope caught on the car, and one diver's equipment became tangled in the vehicle as well. The diver next to him cut the rope but could not free the diver, whose mouthpiece was already out of his mouth, Petrusson said.

"He was probably in trouble already at that time," Petrusson said.

The other diver could not hold on to the victim in the current. That diver and the others were swept downstream, and it was 10 to 15 minutes before they could call for help.

Cold search

Authorities responded to an emergency call shortly before 11 a.m. and searched with a sonar device from a boat for much of Sunday afternoon and into the evening, but they did not find the missing man.

The search was to continue today.

After several hours of searching with the sonar device in depths of 15 to 17 feet, Petrusson said searchers believed the diver's body might have become separated from the car but was probably weighted enough to sink nearby.

He said the river's current was too risky for divers to search on Sunday. He added that searchers hadn't been aware of any submerged cars in that stretch of river, which is not only a shipping lane but popular with anglers and boaters. They found not one but two cars in the area, which Petrusson said he suspected had been stolen and ditched. The sheriff's water patrol did not intend to remove the cars, he said.

The area is between Hidden Falls Park on the St. Paul side and a popular off-leash dog park in Minneapolis.

Local scuba instructor Mike Daust said no one he knows dives in the Mississippi River because it is too unpredictable and dangerous.

"The visibility is so bad," said Daust, who has been diving for about a decade. "The river is always moving and sometimes it's moving faster than at other times. Once you drop in the water, you really have no idea where you're going to end up downstream."

The current at Hidden Falls Park is "one of the fastest reaches [of the river] in the Twin Cities," in part because the stretch is narrow and located just below a lock and dam, said Whitney Clark, executive director of Friends of the Mississippi River. Recent rains also would have reduced water clarity, Clark said.

Clark said he hasn't heard of a diver drowning in the river in his eight years with Friends of the Mississippi. Only biologists dive regularly at Hidden Falls Park, he said.