Searchers find bodies of two men who went into river after child
The bodies of the two men who went into treacherous water to save a 10year-old have been recovered, officials announced Thursday.
The discovery comes three days after the three people were swept into a rainswollen drainage ditch tunnel in Milwaukee.
Milwaukee police Insp. David Feldmeier said one body was recovered in the area of 1st and Becher streets, and it appears the other was found in the area of South Hilbert Street.
Those locations are several miles downstream of the drainage tunnel, near South 27th Street and West Loomis Avenue, the three people were swept into Monday evening after hard rainfall. Milwaukee Fire Department officials said a 10-year-old boy slipped into the water and two adult males, ages 34 and 37, went in after him.
The boy has been identified as Mohammed A. Roshidulcah of Milwaukee. His body was recovered Tuesday about a mile and half downstream from the tunnel’s exit, Fire Chief Aaron Lipski said.
“This community is an extremely tight-knit and very strong community and we are hopeful, and we offer our support, that they (the family) are going to pull through this and find strength on the other side,” Lipski said at a press conference Thursday. “Not any one of us can imagine what such a huge loss to this community must feel like.”
A report from the medical examiner’s office issued Thursday said Mohammed fell into the drainage ravine while he was chasing after a soccer ball near his home on the 3800 block of South 25th Street.
He entered the water shortly before 6 p.m., soon after a rainstorm had swollen the drainage ditch and accelerated the speed of the water.
His father then jumped into the water and gave him a “bear hug” in an attempt to rescue him, but both became distressed in the water, the report said. Another adult then leaped in after them and attempted to create a “human chain” while holding on to something near the shore.
But the man lost his grip and all three way were swept downstream, where the tunnel waited less than half a mile away.
Rescue attempts from first responders had to be suspended as nightfall set in Monday. By the next morning, Lipski said he was all but certain the victims could not have survived the swollen, fast-moving, debris-littered waters inside the 900-footlong tunnel.
The search for the remaining bodies focused farther downstream since then. At a 5 p.m. news conference Wednesday , Lipski said responders searched the length of the Kinnickinnic River from 1st and Becher streets to Lake Michigan four separate times.
He said divers, boats, people walking along the shore, drones and sonar equipment were all used in the search. Personnel from police and fire departments, the Milwaukee Metropolitan Sewerage District, the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources and the U.S. Coast Guard have all been involved.
He also lauded community members for volunteering to walk along the riverbanks, but emphasized they needed to be careful.
The search had been complicated by rising and lowering water levels and excess debris in the water that could snag a body and hold it beneath the surface, Lipski said.
“The environment we’re searching is not static, I want everyone to appreciate that,” he said. “We appear to have a tremendous amount of community and partner support in this effort, so that propels you to keep moving.”