BY BOB KIRKPATRICK
The Daily World
Efforts to locate and recover the body of a local man presumed dead after jumping into the river near the Little Hoquiam Shipyard Wednesday morning to avoid arrest by area law enforcement has been called off.
The four-day coordinated search by the Hoquiam Police Department, Grays Harbor Sheriff”s Office, the Kitsap County Underwater Search & Rescue and the U.S. Coast Guard was called off Saturday. Officers saw him slip under the water Wednesday about 150 feet from shore near the south end of the railroad bridge approach from the Lincoln Street side of the river and he was not seen again.
Although the man is well known to local law enforcement and his family has been notified as to his apparent demise, Hoquiam police will not release his name.
“The Kitsap County Underwater Search & Rescue Team was on the river again this past Saturday, with the patrol boat from the Grays Harbor County Sheriff’s Department,” Hoquiam Police Chief Jeff Myers said Monday. “They used side-scan sonar to check the area where a diver contacted the body on Thursday, but they could not locate it. Given the currents in the area, the concern is the body has moved. It could have gone up or down river as the tidal influence is very severe in this area.” Myers said the diver was unable to maintain contact with the body in the murky currents of the river.
The incident began when a Hoquiam officer who was dispatched to a suspicious vehicle call on Sanderling Lane in the Woodlawn area at 8:08 a.m. Sept. 14, passed a male subject riding a bicycle with a blue canoe (which turned out to be stolen) in tow on a makeshift trailer.
The officer recognized him as a 35-year old Hoquiam man wanted on an outstanding felony probation warrant from the state Department of Corrections. He was also a suspect in several open Hoquiam cases.
The same man had eluded police the previous night in the 300 block of Broadway Avenue.
According to a Wednesday press release, after the suspect realized he was recognized, he fled into the thick brush toward the Hoquiam River wearing a heavy coat, hooded sweatshirt, jeans and a large backpack.
As the officer gave chase on foot, he emerged along the river to find the suspect attempting to swim the river from the Broadway Avenue side to the Lincoln Street side; a distance of about 300 feet.
The suspect ignored the officer’s instruction to stop and return to shore and was quickly swept upstream in the incoming tide. As the man continued to try to swim across the river, he traveled upstream about 900 feet toward an abandoned railroad swing-bridge in the center of the channel.
As to releasing the name of the missing man, Myers said, “Protocol dictates this to be handled by the Grays Harbor County Coroner’s Office, not the police department, unless we are authorized by the coroner to do so. In this case, we had assumed we would recover the body on Thursday and it would not have been an issue.”
“I don’t have the name of the individual so I can’t release it,” County Coroner Lane Youmans said. “We’ll just have to wait for him to be found.”
Youmans said he prefers to have the body recovered prior to releasing the identity.
“If (the body isn’t recovered soon), we’ll reassess the situation in a week and if nothing changes, I’ll issue a presumptive death certificate as officers witnessed him sink below the surface of the water. It’s clear he is still in there.”
