SILOAM SPRINGS -- At least six organizations tried find a 55-year-old man after he went under the Illinois River near Arkansas 59 around 2 p.m. on Tuesday.
Randy Barton was swimming with his family on the river when officials believe he suffered an asthma attack. He was last seen floating down the river, according to witnesses. Fire departments and emergency medical technicians from Siloam Springs, Centerton, Highfill, Gallatin, and Westville, Okla., joined the Benton County Sheriff's Office for the recovery effort.
"We were setting up the tent and I heard them screaming for help," said Jeremie Grant, who was camping by the river during the incident. "When I went down there, they said their uncle had went under and I never did see him after that, so I called 911."
Grant said Barton's family said he had an asthma attack before submerging.
At some point another witness borrowed a kayak to go down the river in search of Barton, but the kayak flipped and that person got caught in a small island of brush in the middle of the stream. When the swift-water rescue team arrived they pulled the bearded man who had lost control of the borrowed kayak out of the water. This man was also camping near Grant.
"At this point it is recovery effort, not a rescue effort," said Sgt. Mike Lira, public information officer for the Benton County Sheriff's Office. "The family has been notified and hopefully we can find him and put this to rest. Anything like this where you have a rescue effort takes time and with this much time elapsed either he is not here or it is a recovery. The hope is that he is not here, but it looks like it is going to be a recovery effort based on the (statements of) witnesses."
Lira added it hasn't been confirmed if Barton was under the influence of drugs or alcohol, but once the body is recovered there will be a toxicology test.
"It is never good if we lose one person drowning, it is bad and this is not the first one this year," said Mike Dixon with Benton County Emergency Management. He added this is at least the fifth swift-water rescue or recovery for the season.
One factor in the recovery effort is Barton wasn't wearing a personal flotation device.
"With a flotation device we would know right where this guy would be and he would be just fine," Dixon said. "And that is everyone of these we do, unfortunately, without fail. If they would just wear a personal flotation device it would have saved their lives in 100 percent of the cases."
The recovery team left the Arkansas 59 Canoe Rental and RV Park river access point around 5:45 p.m. to continue searching down stream. It wasn't clear to either Dixon or Lira if the team would continue to search through the evening and into the night, or they were going to come back the next day.
"It is different every time," Dixon said about the strategy used by search and dive teams. "There is a lot of different factors that play into it, so we are going to have to sit down with the incident commander and decision-makers and decide what the game plan is going to be for how the strategy is going to work."
NW News on 07/01/2015