Law enforcement officers pulled the body of a man out of the Arkansas River on Thursday hours after he crashed his car on the nearby Interstate 30 bridge, ran from his vehicle and entered the water, authorities said.
Arkansas State Police Sgt. Coty Williams said two witnesses had observed the unidentified man driving erratically from Cabot at a high speed toward Little Rock.
While in the I-30 westbound lane on the bridge over the Arkansas River, the man drove into the center barriers, causing eastbound drivers to slow and multiple vehicles to crash. His vehicle then sideswiped one car and rear-ended another, Williams said.
After his car came to a stop, the man got out and ran, leaving a 1-year-old girl in his vehicle. He ran from the bridge to the riverbank on the North Little Rock side of the river and went into the water, Williams said.
The child was taken to Arkansas Children's Hospital, and investigators were trying Thursday afternoon to identify her and locate her guardian, he said.
Searcy Police Department spokesman Lt. Steve Hernandez confirmed late Thursday that the vehicle and the man and child had left Searcy earlier Thursday. Though little information was immediately available, Hernandez said an officer took a complaint from a Searcy resident about 4 p.m. Thursday concerning the man and child.
Though he could not release the nature of the complaint, Hernandez said, it involved two parties and the little girl. The complaint was reported hours after the man was already in the river.
"There's still a lot of questions on our end," Hernandez said.
The initial call about an accident with injuries on the bridge arrived at 2:21 p.m., Little Rock Fire Department Capt. Jacob Lear-Sadowsky said.
Almost four hours later, North Little Rock Fire Department water rescue teams pulled the man's body from the water.
Pulaski County Coroner Gerone Hobbs, who was driving on Interstate 40 Thursday afternoon, said he witnessed the man speeding along I-40 toward I-30. He watched the car crash into another vehicle on the bridge, and he saw the man get out of the car.
Hobbs said he got out of his vehicle and followed the man, unsure of why the man was running on the bridge toward the water.
"I said 'Hey man, come here,'" Hobbs related Thursday as he stood near the riverbank at a landing just east of the highway, where authorities later found the man's body. "He kept saying, 'They're after me. They're after me.'"
Hobbs said he continued to follow the man, pleading with him not to get into the water, knowing that the river was cold and flowing swiftly and what that would mean. But the man got in the water anyway, Hobbs said, lowering himself down until his arms rested on the side of a pier and the lower half of his body was submerged.
"I said 'Please come out of the water. We can work through this,'" Hobbs said. "He just pushed off, and he put his hands straight up in the air like he wanted to go down."
The man sank immediately, Hobbs said. He surfaced three times, then sank and Hobbs said he did not see the man again until rescue teams recovered his body.
Though the Pulaski County sheriff's office dive team initially intended to go into the water to find the body, office spokesman Lt. Cody Burk said the river was flowing too quickly to allow divers to safely search.
A small craft advisory was issued last month for the river, and it was still in effect as of Thursday evening, according to the U.S. Army Corps. of Engineers. Advisories are issued when the river's flow exceeds 70,000 cubic feet per second.
So instead of divers, the rescue crew searched from the surface for more than an hour and located the body using sonar, North Little Rock Fire Capt. John Pflasterer said.
The crew used several methods to try to pull the body to the surface, including repeatedly tossing a four-pronged hook into the water and reaching into the water with long poles with cord loops on the edges. The longest pole -- well over 12 feet long -- disappeared almost to the handle in the water off the edge of the pier.
At 6:13 p.m., the crew found him, grabbed hold of his arm and waistband, and pulled him to shore.
The Arkansas State Police, which will lead the investigation, had not released the man's identity as of late Thursday.
NW News on 11/03/2018