This morning, a Marion County wildlife officer continued the search for bodies of three missing boaters who were lost during a Saturday night boating accident near Nickajack Dam.
“There is a ton of debris out here,” said Russell Vandergriff, Tennessee Wildlife Resource Officer for Marion County and lead investigator on the case.
Searchers found three lifejackets Sunday and pieces of the boat as far as eight miles downstream from the site of the accident, Officer Vandergriff said.
Local TWRA officers will conduct searches in morning and afternoon shifts until told otherwise, he said.
A group of five people from Dalton, Ga., were fishing under the dam on the Tennessee River at about 7 p.m. CST Saturday when their boat was pulled into a flood gate, said Joey Wray, an assistant supervisor with the TWRA.
Brothers Hildebrando Hureta-Hernadez, 14, and Norberto Hureta-Hernadez, 26, were found Saturday night about two miles downstream with no apparent injuries, he said.
Angel Ocampo, 48, driver of the boat, is one of the missing, the names of the other two missing boaters have not yet been released to the public.
Todd South covers courts and the military for the Times Free Press. He has worked at the paper for three years and previously covered crime and safety in Southeast Tennessee and North Georgia. Todd’s hometown is Dodge City, Kan. He served five years in the U.S. Marine Corps and deployed to Iraq before returning to school for his journalism degree from the University of Georgia. Todd previously worked at the Anniston (Ala.) Star. Contact Todd ...
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