Niagara Falls searchers find unrelated body
NIAGARA FALLS, Ontario - Searchers were unable to find the body of a 19-year-old Japanese student who was swept over Niagara Falls and presumed drowned after falling from a railing along the Canadian side of the Niagara River, park police said Monday.
However, the remains of an unidentified male were recovered from the whirlpool below the falls after being spotted by an Erie County Sheriff's department helicopter search crew. Police and the coroner were working to identify him; police said his death appears to be unrelated.
The woman was visiting the falls with a friend on Sunday evening when she climbed over the railing and straddled it while holding an umbrella. The woman apparently lost her balance and fell into the water when she stood up to climb back over, police said. She fell into the swift-moving river about 80 feet upstream from the brink of the Horseshoe Falls.
According to CBS affiliate WIVB in Buffalo, authorities say surveillance video captured the incident and showed no one else in the immediate vicinity of the victim when she lost her footing. Because of that, police don't suspect foul play.
The Niagara Parks Police department said it was working with the Japanese consulate general to notify the victim's family. Her name was being withheld pending the notification.
Compared to the crowds of people who visit the falls, the woman's fall is an "anomaly," Deputy Chief Jim P. Jessop, of the Niagara Falls fire department, told the Buffalo News. "To have someone accidentally go over the falls is not a common occurrence."
On the American side of the falls, Parks Police Sgt. James Riddle told the News he too often sees people risking safety for an experience or photograph.
Both officers told the newspaper that rescues of hikers along the Niagara Gorge, where the lower Niagara River winds in the open, are more common. Also on Sunday, a man who had climbed a safety wall was rescued from the gorge with serious injuries.
"The only information we were given is that he wanted to get a better view of the falls," Jessop told the Buffalo News.