MOON RIVER, Ont. – Police divers have pulled a second male body from the treacherous waterfall in Ontario’s Muskoka cottage country where three cliff-jumpers went missing Sunday.
The body of a man wearing red swimming trunks was lifted from the water at 1:25 p.m. today.
Officers then slipped the body into a white bag and took a picture of the man’s face.
Divers are still searching for a third swimmer who is presumed drowned.
The first body, clad in black shorts, was dragged onto the rocks about 15 minutes after a provincial police helicopter carrying a team of eight police divers touched down on the south bank of the Moon Falls earlier today.
The helicopter returned just before noon and hovered over an area of realtively calmer water a short distance away from the falls.
Seven people believed to be in their 20s got into the fast-moving water at the lower portion of the waterfalls Sunday, but only four came out.
The swimmers entered the lower portion of the waterfalls where the water moved faster than normal and was half a metre higher than usual due to recent heavy rainfall.
Mark Walsh, who is renting a cottage on the river, had beers Monday with six “heroes” from Barrie, Ont., who saw the swimmers in trouble and reacted quickly.
“They had a machete with them, chopped down a tree, and put some towels or shirts in the end of it and got…four of them out,” Walsh said.
“I told them, you guys should be proud of yourselves. You saved lives today.”
A group of seven people, apparently family, arrived at the falls just before 11 a.m. Tuesday and were met by police crews.
Four young people sat down on a rock jutting into the water near the falls, while two women and a man crossed to the bank of the falls where a body lay in a white bag.
An officer opened the bag to show the woman the body.
She kneeled over and kissed the hand of the dead man as the other two people wept over the body.
The man took one last look at the body bag flapping in the wind as he walked away, and the group stood staring into the vortex where the young man died. One girl left the group and sat alone as she mourned.
Police loaded the body onto the helicopter as the group watched.
