“As crews arrived, they immediately deployed multiple boats into the water and began searching along the shoreline. After approximately one hour of search efforts, divers from the Wright-Patterson AFB Fire Department located and removed an adult male victim from the water,” French said.
In a 911 call, a woman said “her boyfriend is drowning and went under and hasn’t come back up.” A second 911 caller confirmed they were at Eastwood MetroPark on the river by the first waterfall with rocks nearby.
The first caller said there was a current and it sucked the man under. When asked by the 911 dispatcher how long he had been in the water, the caller said probably at least five minutes.
“He went under trying to save my daughter,” she said.
Additional people tried to help but weren’t able to get him, she said.
“We went over to the little waterfall right here and my daughter fell in off the tube,” the first caller said. “He got her and he was trying to get her, he ended up letting go of her and I went and saved my daughter and he went under.”
The man was located at 8:08 p.m. and removed from the recovered from the river at 8:10 p.m., according to dispatch records.
The Montgomery County Coroner’s Office was contacted after the 31-year-old man was found dead, French said.
The man’s name has not been released.
The Dayton Police Department, Fiver Rivers MetroParks rangers, Riverside Fire Department and the Ohio Department of Natural Resources also assisted in the search and recovery efforts.
The incident is under investigation by Five Rivers MetroParks.
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