Body found 220 kilometres from city could be MacIntosh
RCMP could confirm as early as Tuesday whether a body discovered near Wapiti Regional Park over the weekend is that of Myles MacIntosh, the man believed to have fallen into the South Saskatchewan River in Saskatoon three months ago.
Melfort RCMP said a team of marine researchers came across the body of an unidentified Caucasian male in the park about 220 kilometres northeast of Saskatoon on Saturday afternoon.
Sgt. Craig Cleary said an autopsy is scheduled Tuesday to identify the body, but that RCMP “definitely have their own suspicions about who it may be.”
Wally Kohle, the father of MacIntosh’s fiancee, said Saskatoon police called Sunday to say MacIntosh’s body might have been recovered near the Melfort area.
“They’re pretty sure,” Kohle said.
Kohle’s daughter Kara, who was to be MacIntosh’s sister-in-law, tweeted later that night that “any last tiny hope, wonder and wish was washed away today.”
“We’ve been waiting and searching for Myles. The wait is over, he can be laid to rest,” Kara Kohle tweeted.
MacIntosh, 28, was reported missing in the early hours of Feb. 2, when he failed to return home from his own bachelor party.
He’d spent the previous night with friends at a nightclub on Idylwyld Drive and was eventually asked to leave the club. MacIntosh then boarded a pub-crawl bus, got into an altercation with a nightclub bouncer and got off the bus near the intersection of Lorne Avenue and Eighth Street.
It is believed MacIntosh eventually found his way to the edge of the river ice near the Senator Sid Buckwold Bridge, where someone was seen falling into the water. DNA from blood found on the ice matched that of MacIntosh.
Friends, family, volunteers and the Saskatoon police and fire departments have spent months searching for MacIntosh with divers, sonar equipment and underwater cameras. The family of MacIntosh’s fiancee launched an online FundRazr campaign this spring to support volunteer searchers and has so far raised more than $10,000.
Money left over after reimbursing volunteers for accommodations and transportation will be used to fly MacIntosh’s body back to his family home in Lunenburg, N.S., and to support other search and recovery operations in Saskatchewan.
The most recent search for MacIntosh, which wrapped earlier this month, saw a dozen volunteers from the Lac La Ronge First Nations community of Grandmother’s Bay scouring the river from Saskatoon’s Senator Sid Buckwold Bridge to the village of St. Louis, about 120 km downriver of where the body was found this weekend.
In a statement released to the media Monday, the Kohle and MacIntosh families expressed appreciation for everyone who helped with the search and said MacIntosh’s fiancee, Michelle Kohle, will now be able to take MacIntosh home.
Scott Denny, 33, is charged with aggravated assault in connection with the pubcrawl incident. His trial is scheduled for Nov. 10 to 13.