A Scottsboro, Alabama, man has been identified as the person whose body was recovered from South Sauty Creek in Buck's Pocket State Park on the DeKalb-Jackson county line Sunday.
An Alabama Law Enforcement Agency spokesman said Sunday in a statement that the body of 82-year-old Raymond Edwards was recovered around 4:22 p.m. Edwards went missing Feb. 5 at the South Sauty Creek crossing in flood waters surging through the deep creek gorge in the wake of recent rains, agency spokesman Senior Trooper Chuck Daniel said.
Edwards' vehicle was found by state park search crews about 1:45 p.m. CST Sunday, and at around 2:30 p.m. a diver confirmed Edwards was with the vehicle, Daniel said.
The same weather that created the deadly flood waters also delayed search activities in recent days because of high water levels and dangerous terrain, officials said last week.
Mike Jeffreys - the district superintendent of Northeast Alabama state parks, including Buck's Pocket - said last week that it typically takes three days or more for flooded South Sauty Creek to recede, but searchers were able to return over the weekend.
Staff photo by Ben Benton / Rain-swollen South Sauty Creek on Feb. 13, 2020, still rushes over the crossing in Buck's Pocket State Park on the DeKalb-Jackson county line in Alabama where a person and vehicle went missing Feb. 5, 2020, amid high flood waters. On Sunday, the body of 82-year-old Scottsboro resident Raymond Edwards was recovered from the creek.The Feb. 5 incident marks the second time in less than a year an occupied vehicle has been swept off the same South Sauty Creek crossing.
On Feb. 22, 2019, 18-year-old Geraldine, Alabama, resident Koy Spears went missing when the Jeep Cherokee he was riding in with two other people was washed off the crossing by flood waters.
The other two people, identified last year as 22-year-old Crossville, Alabama, resident Sara Lucille Mooneyham and 21-year-old Jaxon Cole Jones, of Dawson, Alabama, were rescued an hour or so after the Jeep vanished, the Times Free Press reported last year.
Spears' body was found March 12, 2019, more than two weeks after the incident. The Jeep was found March 21, 2019, several hundred yards downstream from the crossing.
Jeffreys said state parks officials are meeting Thursday with officials from DeKalb and Jackson counties about installing gates on Jackson County State Route 452 on the north side of South Sauty Creek, and on DeKalb County Road 173 on the south side. He said details would be worked out soon.
Jeffreys also said there had been significant damage to the crossing itself from all the water rushing over it and through the tiles beneath it.
Contact Ben Benton at bbenton@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6569. Follow him on Twitter @BenBenton or at www.facebook.com/benbenton1.