MURRAY COUNTY, Ga. — Teams this morning will resume looking on and under the cold Conasauga River here for a fisherman missing since Sunday.
“We are continuing the search,” Murray County Sheriff’s Chief Deputy Ray Sitton said late Wednesday. “But it is turning more into a recovery than a search.”
Waylon Keith “Bo” Hackney, 38, of 4245 Brown Bridge Road in southwest Murray County, had gone fishing in a flat-bottom boat after an Easter Egg hunt Sunday afternoon.
He never returned.
The boat, fishing gear and cigarettes were found, upright and afloat, wedged by the fast-flowing water against a pine tree that had fallen across the Conasauga River. The gear was found 1.8 miles from where Mr. Hackney put his boat in the water near Airport and Brown Bridge roads, authorities said.
“Nothing indicts there was any foul play,” Chief Deputy Sitton said.
On March 21 the body of another man, Brett Thomason, was found about eight miles away in the Conasauga in Whitfield County. He had gone missing on Feb. 19.
The search for Mr. Hackney that began Sunday night has involved cadaver dogs, underwater cameras, sonar, divers and dragging operations concentrated within about a two-mile stretch of river.
On Wednesday there were 40 people involved in the search and rescue operation. Murray County Rescue, firefighters and sheriff’s department personnel have been joined by teams from Forsyth County. The Georgia Department of Natural Resources also was represented at the scene.
A privately owned cadaver dog from Whitfield County was at the search site Wednesday where three cadaver dog teams from Atlanta were on hand the day before.
Divers wearing dry suits and fleece undergarments on Wednesday swam and walked on the bottom of the river that ranged from a few feet to about 12 feet deep.
The 58-degree water had gone down about a foot since a rescue operation was staged shortly before midnight Sunday, but recent heavy rains have made the banks treacherously slippery, searchers said.
Divers said the bottom is free of snags, primarily smooth gravel and sand, but the water flows rapidly. One diver said he was wearing “48 pounds of lead” and still was pushed and pulled by the strong current.
