Missing towboat crew member believed dead

PADUCAH, Ky. -- Searchers are presuming a towboat employee did not survive after the boat he and two others were on Friday night sank in the Ohio River near Paducah.

Brent Stringer, director of Emergency Management for Livingston County, said a team of eight to 10 people took boats out into the river around 7 a.m. Sunday to search for the missing man who was a crew member on the towboat. They called off the search about 3:30 p.m. Sunday.

The U.S. Coast Guard said two men had been pulled from the water Saturday. They were Steve Fuller, 46, of Benton, Ky., and Raymond Lang, 33, of Metropolis, Ill. The boat flipped near Owens Island, a small area on the river just off Paducah. The other man's identity was not released.

Stringer said divers are expected to begin searching around the sunken boat and debris along the banks this morning.

"We've got a lot of debris along the banks because the river is so high," Stringer said. "So it makes the search harder."

Stringer said the search and rescue team scanned eight to 10 miles of shoreline about a mile upstream of Paducah on the Illinois side of the river.

The U.S. Coast Guard said the boat was found Saturday and the site was marked with a lighted buoy. The river was closed for several hours Saturday and then reopened for river traffic. The boat was a 50-foot long fleet boat, which is about half the size of the boats that move barges up and down the Ohio River.

The tugboat is owned by Paducah-based National Maintenance and Repair of Kentucky, a subsidiary of McGinnis Inc. of Cincinnati.

The cause of the accident is under investigation.