Car in river (fatal)

[BigWheelArchives]

10-1-04

Received a call from the Taunton Police Department to respond to the area of the Taunton River where it goes through the center of town. They requested that we bring a large wrecker and our dive team. They further explained that an elderly woman was observed backing out of a parking lot adjacent to the river, and apparently she hit the gas instead of the brake and the car lunged through the chain link fence and then airborned itself into the river. Within a few minutes the car sank to the bottom with the elderly woman inside. They stated that the very swift current was dragging the car downstream and they felt it was in the area of the bridge. We responded with our dive team as well as the State Police dive team, and our 60 ton rotator. Our divers along with the State Police divers entered the water about 300 yards upstream in an attempt to try to make it to the center of the river as the swift current dragged them along. After a few tries the divers were able to tie a rope on the car along with a buoy, as it sat in 25 feet of water on the bottom. The whole process took around 4 1/2 hours to find the vehicle and secure a line to it. At that point we dropped our winch line down from the rotator and our divers secured it to the submerged vehicle. We lifted the car straight up out of the water, swung it around on top of the bridge that we were on, and at that time the medical examiner removed the womans body from the vehicle. We then loaded the vehicle onto our ramp truck and transported it back to our Freetown location.

 

 

we did not lift the car that way we set it back down and i made the divewrs put tanker straps threw the to windows and i lifted the car level so the women did not fall out the window during the recoveryI NO better than picking the car by the bumper full of water or empty

 

git r towed said:

Good thinking. I just done one the same way, I made them run aline through the car because there was two bodies still in the car and had to lift straight up sixty feet and didn'twant to lose the bodies, it wouldn't look professional, Thanks for the pictures......John