Select Page

From: The State Journal

94777dc2321c5123c7ef29e9ac1b6affb7ee696d_kayak_look030409hs

Frankfort Emergency Management continued to comb the river Wednesday to recover the body of a kayaker who a witness says overturned in the Kentucky River near the Singing Bridge.

Battalion Chief Dan Shouse said officials won’t release the man’s name until family members can be notified, and it could be days before a body is found.

Officers with Kentucky Fish and Wildlife and Frankfort Emergency Management will drag the river Wednesday until it gets too dark to search, Shouse said.

Four kayakers – three males and one female – set out at 10 a.m. Wednesday, and after stopping for lunch at Rick’s White Light, decided to boat a little longer, Shouse said.

Three kayakers continued on, without realizing the fourth wasn’t behind them, Shouse said.

At 1:34 p.m., a female passenger in a car that was driving over the Singing Bridge called 911 to say she’d seen a man overturned in a kayak and trying to right himself.

Rescue workers found the kayak, and the man’s car was still parked nearby, Shouse said. Eight divers took shifts searching in the 50-degree water, but there was little visibility and they couldn’t locate the man.

Shouse said there was a strong current in the river Wednesday, but it would be speculation to say that’s why the man overturned.

It is unclear how the kayakers knew each other, but Shouse said they might have been acquaintances.