HENRY COUNTY, Ohio — On Friday, 49-year-old Alex Smith was found dead in the Maumee River by Toledo Fire and Rescue's dive team after an hours-long water recovery.
The Henry County Sheriff's Office said their involvement began around 6:40 p.m. that evening when their office got a call about a possible drowning in the river, south of County Road 4a in Washington Township.
Smith's body was recovered at about 9:20 p.m. on Saturday.
The sheriff's office said witnesses on the scene saw Smith fall off a boat and into the water, and never resurface.
The sheriff requested mutual aid to begin a rescue mission, and soon the river by Texas, Ohio, was filled with boats from the Coast Guard, the Ohio Department of Natural Resources and multiple fire departments, including two members of the TFRD dive team.
"So they went into the water, began search patterns, that took about 30-35 minutes, they were unsuccessful," Sterling Rahe, Toledo Fire and Rescue's Public Information Officer, said.
Rahe said as more time passed without seeing Smith, rescue became less and less likely.
The team started shifting to recovery. That's when Shelbie Flegal, a Springfield Township firefighter and the handler of Darwin, Lucas County's cadaver dog, was brought in to help locate Smith.
"The dogs can tell us within reason where the body is, and it helps divers save time from looking in a bunch of different areas," said Flegal.
Flegal said between Darwin and ODNR's sonar, the team was close to finding Smith. But they soon realized they were racing against another ticking clock. They were losing daylight, potentially forcing the operation to be suspended after dark, and leaving Smith's family without answers for a whole night.
"The dive team decided to make another dive, another pass, until we ran out of daylight, and then they went down on the second dive, and with about three or four minutes, they discovered the victim," said Rahe.
The Henry County Sheriff's Office determined there was no foul play in Smith's death.
Rahe says recoveries like Smith's are bittersweet for the divers.
"The hope is you're always going to find somebody and be able to bring them back and they're alive. Unfortunately, doesn't always happen and this was a recovery, but I think the solace for the dive team was that they were able to start to give some kind of closure to the family," Rahe said.
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