Tuesday marks two weeks since three teenagers vanished near the river. On Saturday, a fisherman discovered a body. By Sunday, he had told me how he and his cousin jumped into action to keep it from floating downstream.
Anthony Newson usually fishes at Carter Lake, but on Saturday, he decided to cast farther out to N.P. Dodge Park. That was when he noticed what appeared to be a body floating in the river.
“It was definitely meant.. because this is not my stomping grounds for me to go fishing because I am not too familiar with the river and its just a big body of water that I am not comfortable with, so I definitely try to stay away as much as possible,” according to Newson.
Newson claims he immediately dialed 911.
“I could not quite make it out.. but as I got closer, the current eventually brought the body into this little canal area — and that is when I was able to get a full view that it was a body,” according to Newson.
He and his cousin did everything they could to prevent the body from drifting until police arrived.
“They eventually tried to run down to the edge of the water with their long branches and try to you know pull it back as close as possible but that was not too much success because the current was still pushing,” Newson told me.
Police arrived minutes later and recovered the body.
Currently, the search is centered at N.P. Dodge Park, but crews are still working downstream toward Plattsmouth. They use boats and rafts to reach the river’s shallows, and sonar to scan beneath the surface. I am told that divers are only called in when sonar detects something.