MAN AND SON DROWN IN PRIVATE POND

ARBOR -- The bodies of a Chaffee man and his 7-year-old son were pulled from a pond here Tuesday after the two failed to return home a day earlier from fishing.

The bodies of Wesley Allen Coomer, 31, and the boy, Trenton Coomer, were found in a private pond off Cape Girardeau County Road 261, authorities said. County Coroner John Carpenter said the two had drowned accidentally.

"You just think that in a little piece of water that nothing is going to happen," said Carpenter. "They were found in probably eight to six feet of water."

Arbor is about three miles southwest of Delta on Highway 25. The pond, Carpenter said, is owned by a Coomer relative.

Cape Girardeau County Sheriff Norman Copeland said the pond ranged in depth from about six feet to 25 feet. An older brother of Wesley Coomer, Dennis Coomer, estimated the pond as being 600 feet in length and 200 feet in width.

Copeland said search and recovery efforts had continued through Monday night and into Tuesday.

Search and recovery team members discovered the bodies in the pond's north end, about 30 feet from the bank opposite of where family members Monday found a 10-foot aluminum fishing boat used by the victims, Carpenter said. Divers found Coomer's body, he said, while authorities found the boy's body with dragging equipment.

Authorities said the bodies were about 60 feet south of the boat, which was upright and filled with about three-quarters water, authorities said. "The wind probably carried the boat on over and beached it in the brush," Carpenter said.

Wesley Coomer and Trenton had failed to return after a rainstorm, the Cape Girardeau County Sheriff's Department reported. The department said it received a missing person report at 7:08 p.m. on Monday. Relatives had begun search~ing for the two at about 5 p.m.

Carpenter declined to guess at the distance between the bodies, but he said they had been "in proximity of each other."

Copeland said he didn't want to speculate on how the two had drowned. "One can speculate all day what happened," he said, "but I have no idea."

Nearly five hours separated the discovery of the bodies. Authorities said team members discovered Trenton's body at 9:57 a.m. and Coomer's at 2:45 p.m.

Copeland attributed the large time span between the discoveries to the makeup of the pond, which he said is filled with rocks and brush and difficult to drag. Reporters were afforded no view of the pond from the county road. Sheets of tarpaulin covered a path to the pond through the trees.

Dennis Coomer said Tuesday that family members did not wish to comment on Wesley or Trenton Coomer or their deaths. But a life-long resident of Arbor, Ida England, described Wesley Coomer as a very good person.

"I'll just say he was an a No. 1 kid," said England, 80, who lives in a trailer at the junction of County Road 262 and Highway 25. "He was one of the best, I can tell you, around here.

"He had no kind of meanness. If he ever got into any trouble after he married and left here, I didn't hear about it, and I think I would have."

England said she had known Wesley Coomer even since he was a little boy and that he had played with her grandsons and even her son, Charles England, also of Arbor.

Copeland said the sheriff's department was aided in the search and recovery effort by the Delta and Cape Girardeau fire departments, the Missouri Conservation Department, Bollinger County Sheriff's Department, the Missouri State Water Patrol and the Missouri State Highway Patrol. The Academy of Scuba Training Inc. in Cape Girardeau provided three divers, Carpenter said.