Body of 10-year-old boy recovered from KK River; 2 adults still missing
After being swept into a rain-swollen drainage ditch on Milwaukee’s south side Monday, the body of a 10-year-old boy was pulled from the Kinnickinnic River on Tuesday afternoon while the search continued for two men who went in after the boy.
After rescue crews were forced to suspend operations Monday night due to nightfall amid perilous conditions, Fire Chief Aaron Lipski said Tuesday morning he was all but certain the three victims could not have survived the treacherous waters that feed into a 900foot tunnel and likely littered with all kinds of debris.
“There’s no way to survive that,” he said.
The body was discovered about a mile and a half downstream from the tunnel by one of numerous residents who volunteered to search the shoreline, Lipski said. It was found after first responders conducted a treacherous recovery mission inside the tunnel.
The boy was about to turn 11 in less than a month, Lipski said.
Police and fire officials said around 6 p.m. Monday, the 10-year-old slipped into the drainage ditch, which branches off from the Kinnickinnic River and was swollen from hard rainfall earlier that evening.
Witnesses reported that two men, ages 34 and 37, entered the water to rescue the child, and all three were swept into a tunnel that runs underneath the roadway, beginning near South 27th Street and West Loomis Avenue and ending near West Morgan Avenue and West Lakefield Drive.
Lipski said Tuesday afternoon the search has since moved farther downstream, in the area of South 1st and East Becher streets. Divers, boats and drones were being used to locate the adults.
Lipski said the swift-moving, high water levels on Monday, mixed with nightfall, provided “no opportunity” to conduct a rescue operation Monday night.
“I assure you those attempts would probably have resulted in either firefighter fatality or serious injury,” he said. “More important than anything else I’ve said here, that our thoughts and prayers and condolences go out to the family of these people who are waiting on the return of their family
members. This is an absolutely horrible situation.”
Members of Milwaukee’s fire and police departments, Office of Emergency Management, the Metropolitan Sewage District and the National Weather Service collaborated on conducting a Tuesday morning recovery operation in the tunnels after water levels had lowered.
“They are taking risks,” Ald. Scott Spiker, who represents the area, said at the scene Tuesday. “They’re calculated to ensure the safety of the units, but their heroism here is not going unrecognized.”
Lipski said the tunnel is split into three 900-foot-long conduits that run parallel with each other and at one point bend in a certain direction. Digital radio systems stop working 30 feet into the tunnel, forcing rescuers to use an analog system that operates on line-of-sight.
That means multiple rescuers would have to enter each tunnel tethered together. Lipski said rescue crews did not know what debris they would encounter, or what oxygen or gas levels were like inside.
Lipski did not detail how those operations went Tuesday afternoon but did not report any issues other than the general fact that the conditions were challenging. Temperatures in Milwaukee climbed into the 90s in the afternoon with high humidity.
“You can see that it’s wearing heavy on everybody,” he said.
“This is a moment of unspeakable tragedy,” said Spiker, who lives nearby. “My boys have been interested in the culverts. I’ve said since day one how dangerous they are. You have to know they are death traps.”