Identities in creek fatality released
StoryDiscussionIdentities in creek fatality released
Democrat-Herald democratherald.com | Posted: Thursday, January 19, 2012 8:00 am | (37) Comments
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Albany firefighters search Periwinkle Creek after a car with a man and two children was swept into the swollen Creek. (Mark Ylen/Democrat-Herald)
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The Albany Police Department has released the names of four people in a car swept into Periwinkle Creek on Wednesday evening. Recovery efforts are continuing this morning to find the fourth person.
Christopher Wilgus and his son Maliki, 5, were rescued from the vehicle shortly after it was carried downstream just after 7 p.m. Wednesday. About 1 a.m. Thursday, the body of Aiden McLaughlin, 20 months, was recovered several hundred yards downstream.
Linn County sheriff’s deputies were searching this morning for the fourth person believed to be in the vehicle, Aiden’s mother, Catherine McLaughlin, 18.
Maliki was listed in critical condition this morning in the pediatric intensive care unit of Oregon Health and Sciences University Doernbecher Children’s Hospital in Portland. Christopher was treated at Samaritan Albany General Hospital last night and released.
Search and rescue agencies have received conflicting reports about the number of people in the vehicle, said Wanda Omdahl, spokeswoman for the Albany Fire Department. Deputies will be on the lookout for others, but at this point believe McLaughlin was the only other passenger.
Omdahl said deputies planned to walk the creek banks from Geary to Salem Avenue but did not plan to get in the water at this time until conditions are safer.
A witness called 911 around 7:10 p.m. Wednesday after seeing a dark-colored Buick sedan drive across the parking lot at Megafoods toward Geary, into high water and get swept into the creek that runs between the parking lot and Geary Street.
Maliki was pulled from the water around 7:30 p.m. and his father was pulled out shortly thereafter.
They were found on the downstream side where the culvert carrying the creek emerges on the north side of Queen Avenue.
Meanwhile a search of the creek all the way to Bowman Park on the Willamette River continued until around 9 p.m., when it was called off to be renewed this morning.
The car itself had not yet been found.
Several streets were closed because of the accident and the rescue operation. By about 10 o’clock they had been reopened.
The Albany police and fire departments and the Linn County Sheriff’s Office all responded.
Periwinkle Creek is a normally slow-moving channel that crosses underneath the intersection of Queen and Geary. Wednesday night it was a raging torrent with the water nearly level with the street.
Initial reports said the vehicle in the creek was involved in a collision, but both the Albany Fire Department and the Albany Police Department said their investigations so far indicate only that the car made a turn into the west end of the parking lot and was swept into the creek.