Boating Accident On Lake Powell: Valerie Bradshaw Found, Search Continues For Missing Jessica Jackman [PHOTOS]
A boating accident on Utah’s Lake Powell on Thursday morning killed two women and there's a search-and-rescue mission going on for another.
Marilyn Jackman, 57, died after a boat her husband Adrian was driving crashed into a houseboat and flipped. The water where the crash occurred is 400 feet deep, officials said. The bodies of Jackman’s 22-year-old daughter, Jessica, and her son’s girlfriend, 29-year-old Valerie Bradshaw, were missing at the time of the accident, but on Sunday night, search crews found Bradshaw's body in about 340 feet of water. The dive team recovered her body with a robot and transported it to a medical investigator. Officials say they will continue the search for Jessica on Monday, Fox 13 reports.
Kane County Sheriff’s Sgt. Alan Alldredge says the accident occurred at around 8 a.m. The boat’s driver may have been temporarily distracted when the collision occurred. He tried to miss the houseboat but crashed into its front corner, causing it to flip and throwing its 13 passengers overboard.
Jackman’s husband, Adrian, and his 11-year-old granddaughter were evacuated with a medical helicopter to Flagstaff Arizona Hospital and treated for non-life-threatening injuries, Associated Press reports. No one on the houseboat was injured, according to a statement by the Kane County Sheriff’s Office.
Family friends remain shocked by the accident.
“It was Marilyn’s favorite place to be in the world. She talked about it all the time,” Kari Wahlquist, who has known the Jackmans for nearly 20 years, told Fox 13 about Lake Powell. “It was her heaven on Earth, so it’s kind of ironic that’s where the angels came to take her home.”
Lake Powell, the second-largest man-made lake in the U.S., straddles the border between Utah and Arizona. The lake was created in 1963 by the construction of the Glen Canyon Dam and is 186-miles long, but it was only in 1980 when the lake reached "full pool" status at 3,700 feet above sea level.
In July 2011, a 14-year-old Boy Scout died on the lake following a boating accident. A boat carrying Matt Parker, three other Boy Scouts and two scout leaders struck a rock. Parker was thrown out of the boat and killed, Deseret News reports.
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