BEAVER LAKE: Body found near May crash site

— Fishermen discovered a body in Beaver Lake late Tuesday morning in an area where a Rogers man went missing after a May 8 boating collision, the Benton County sheriff's office said.

A spokesman emphasized Tuesday afternoon that the body hasn't been identified.

"We don't know if it's male or female," said a sheriff's spokesman, deputy Doug Gay.

The body was clothed, he said, but it's premature to speculate which missing-person case it might resolve.

The first sheriff's dive team arrived near Horseshoe Bend Park about 12:45 p.m., Gay said, and an eyewitness estimated the body was brought to shore about 2 p.m.

It was taken to the sheriff's office until it can be transported to the state Crime Laboratory in Little Rock for identification.

Maj. Todd Smith of the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission and Lt. Brian McKinzie, the commission's investigator at the scene, said the body was in the general area of the May boating accident. Sheriff's officials described the site as being close to where Doug Farnsworth disappeared.

Farnsworth, 39, hasn't been seen since about dusk May 8, when two boats collided near Horseshoe Bend.

McKinzie, who was the first investigator on the scene the night of the crash, said he has reached no conclusion as to the identity of the person found Tuesday, noting that Farnsworth isn't the only open missing-person case in Benton County.

"What everybody's assuming is that the body recovered is the person lost in May," he said. "I can tell you that it was in that area. But you have to keep in mind ... that the boating accident was three months ago, and the body that was recovered today was not in pristine condition."

While McKinzie is open to the idea the body could be someone other than Farnsworth, "I just don't want people to be thinking this is Alicia Minton. I don't think it is."

Minton, 29, of Rogers vanished June 1, 2007, after heading to Beaver Lake to meet her ex-boyfriend.

The general search area for Minton was on the other side of the Arkansas 12 bridge from where Tuesday's discovery was made, McKinzie said. Authorities searched for her body for about six months.

"The body recovered today was south of Highway 12 bridge and near Horseshoe Bend Marina," he said.

The marina's operator, Kevin Callaghan, said the body was found a couple hundred yardsnorth of the marina, and near the Game and Fish's nursery pond.

"Where they pulled that guy out was right exactly on the same spot where that happened," Callaghan said, referring to the May collision, then adding, "Very close - I wouldn't say it was exactly in the same place."

He said he and other marina employees helped authorities and the Highway 94 East Fire Department ferry the men injured in the boat crash to ambulances.

On Tuesday, Callaghan said he saw authorities pull a body bag onto the bank around 2 p.m., and McKinzie added that investigators left the scene about 3 p.m.

The commission, the agency investigating the crash, called off the search for Farnsworth on May 14.

"That's when we all discovered collectively that we'd exhausted all our resources," said McKinzie, referring to his agency and the sheriff's office, which he said helped with the search.

Northwest Arkansas, Pages 11, 16 on 08/12/2009

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