Rescuers Recover Body of Missing 8-Year-Old

Mar 23, 03:35 AM

Current Headlines: By Edith Brady-Lunny, The Pantagraph, Bloomington, Ill.

Mar. 23--CLINTON -- Rescue workers followed the image of a little boy for three days on sonar equipment until his body was retrieved from Clinton Lake about 5:30 p.m. Thursday.

"We had images from early on, on Tuesday, but he didn't start moving until this morning," said Dennis Waters, a sonar operator who assisted crews working for eight days to locate the body of Kalin Hunter, an 8-year-old boy from Normal.

The child was lost the night of March 14 when the 17-foot aluminum fishing boat carrying him, his grandfather and his uncle went over the 25-foot spillway of Clinton Lake during a storm. The bodies of the two men were recovered March 15 at the base of the spillway, where water flows into Salt Creek.

Conservation police Cmdr. Duane Pitchford said Kalin was found about 130 yards south of the spillway in an area apart from his grandfather and uncle.

Retrieving the child was complicated by what police described as zero visibility and a swift current at the base of the spillway.

Waters, a volunteer with Texas EquuSearch, a sonar search-and-rescue organization, and a long line of conservation police, divers and DeWitt County sheriff's police explained the rescue at a news conference Thursday night.

Waters said he believes early suspicions that Kalin was tangled in heavy debris at the base of the spillway likely were correct.

"He had to have been entangled at some point," Waters said.

Divers from the Vermilion County Sheriff's Department were in the water most of the day Thursday with sonar-equipped boats. The child's body finally was located well below the surface of the water, Waters said.

"When he settled in one spot, we were able to find him," Waters said.

A clear image of the child was caught on side-scan sonar images late Wednesday as rescue efforts on the water were wrapping up, Pitchford said.

"We were dealing with a very difficult, confined search area" Thursday morning, Pitchford said.

The weeklong struggle to find the child was an emotional roller coaster for police and those on the scene to assist them, he said.

"It was extremely frustrating," he said. "Each day we thought we had the right resources to get the job done."

Briefings at the end of each day produced more brainstorming, and those ideas were exchanged for the following day, Pitchford said.

He characterized the search as "ratcheting up" each day to include more resources. On Wednesday, the spillway parking lot was filled with crews from Jacksonville and Morgan County, Vermilion County, Effingham, the Chicago Police Department Marine Unit and the Hillsboro search-and-rescue team.

The search for the little boy "was one of the biggest I've seen," Pitchford said.

The list of agencies thanked by the commander included 20 names.

Conservation police and the agencies assisting them were committed to seeing the rescue through to a successful conclusion, Pitchford said.

"We didn't have any plan to stop until we got the job done. Eight days is what it took to accomplish this with the conditions we had," he said.

Pitchford said he could not address possible changes that may occur at the spillway area as a result of the boating mishap.

"I'm sure there will be some discussions about the circumstances of the accident and the future," he said.

After the child's body was pulled from the water, a jubilant and relieved crowd of rescue workers gathered in the parking lot next to the spillway.

Volunteers from the Mid-Illinois Red Cross chapter served a final meal to about 40 workers before heavy rains drenched the area.

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Copyright (c) 2007, The Pantagraph, Bloomington, Ill.

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