Drowning victim's body recovered from river

Rescue workers found the body of a Missouri man who drowned Saturday afternoon after falling into the Mississippi River near Wittenberg, Mo., according to the Perry County Sheriff's Office.

Terry C. Brunner, 46, of Frohna, Mo., was fishing on a sandbar with his girlfriend Saturday when he apparently fell into the river and could not get out, said Richard Couch, a Perry County Sheriff's deputy.

The couple had been on the sandbar for about four hours when Brunner's girlfriend walked up the sandbar to look for arrowheads. She was gone for about 20 minutes when she heard him yell for her to bring the boat around, Couch said.

When she went back, Brunner had disappeared under the water.

The Cape Girardeau Fire Department, Chester, Ill., and Jackson County, Ill., rescue boats, the Illinois Department of Natural Resources water patrol and the Missouri State Water Patrol all took part in the 8-hour search for Brunner.

"The body was found in approximately the same location it was last seen," Couch said. Brunner was discovered shortly after 11 p.m. Saturday.

Several of the rescue boats used sonar in an attempt to find the body.

"It ws a real team effort, and the technology used was a real timesaver," Perry County Sheriff Gary J. Schaaf said in an e-mail to the Southeast Missourian.

The Cape Girardeau Fire Department rescue boat participated in the search, using sonar to find the body, said Bob Kembel, battalion chief.

Kembel said the sonar helps in search-and-rescue scenarios because it is more accurate than the previous method of dragging the river bottom to find a body.

"When you're talking about on the river, there's a lot of debris," he said. "What we can do now is find them with the sonar and then drag. Before it was just hit or miss."

The fire department purchased the sonar-enabled boats with grant money two years ago.

charris@semissourian.com

335-6611, extension 246