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November 28, 2009

Body pulled from river ID’d

By Mark Millican

One of the three Dalton fishermen whose boat capsized in the Tennessee River on Nov. 21 has been recovered and identified. The other two missing boaters had still not been found after an all-day search on Saturday.

Angel Ocampo, 49, was pulled from the river at 5:35 p.m. CST on Friday, said Marion County (Tenn.) medical examiner Dr. Brenda Sowter.

“We made the identification shortly thereafter,” said Sowter. “Family members met me at the hospital (Grandview Medical Center) and confirmed it was him.”

Ocampo was born in Guerrero, Mexico, and worked at Shaw Industries Plant No. 4 as a Hyster driver, said an obituary from Ponders Funeral Home of Dalton. He was a member of St. Joseph Catholic Church.

Two other men, Hilavio Soniga, 64, and Trancito Garcia, 32, are still missing. Two brothers, Hildebrando Hureta-Hernandez, 14, and Norberto Hureta-Hernandez, 26, were rescued soon after the boat flipped in the rough waters below Nickajack Dam.

Steve Lamb, director of the Marion County EMA, said only a couple of personal items — a knife and a watch — were recovered on Saturday, and those potential keepsakes were turned over to the Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency for possible disbursement to family members.

“The body was found in an eddy about 75 feet off the dam,” he said of Friday’s search. “It was in there with a lot of other debris, but it was not debris from the boat.”

An eddy in a river can have the action of a whirlpool, Lamb said, and keep items submerged in its swirling rotation.

Lamb said the Tennessee Valley Authority gave search teams a “window” of a couple of hours on Saturday when they shut down water flow through the dam so they could get close to it using divers, sonar and underwater cameras.

“It’s difficult to do,” Lamb said of shutting the water down, “because the (lock) gates are remotely controlled. They do send a maintenance man to shut off (the power) locally to make sure that the water doesn’t come back on accidentally. They gave us from 2 to 4 (p.m.) and then just before 4 o’clock I asked them for another hour. They said we had until 5 p.m., but they’ll call me to make sure we’re clear before they open the gates.”

By that time searchers would be getting off the river for the day, he said, and today the search will be primarily along the banks of the river, also known below the dam as the Guntersville Reservoir.

A Mass of Christian Burial will be celebrated Monday at 11:30 a.m. at St. Joseph Catholic Church. Visitation is today from 5 to 9 p.m. at Ponders Funeral Home.

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