Along the muddy banks of the Vermilion River, members of the Vermilion County Sheriff’s Department’s Underwater Search & Recovery team climb into their boat for another search on Wednesday afternoon.
Back and forth across the river they go several times a day, meticulously searching the riverbed for any sign of a 12-year-old boy who has been missing since Monday evening.
The search team — made up of the Danville Police Department, the Illinois Department of Natural Resources, and the Vermilion County Sheriff’s Department — has been working together to find the boy, who police say has been missing since Monday evening around 8 p.m. when he was reported to have been pulled under by the current while swimming with two other boys his age.
That evening, the Danville Police Department initiated their search efforts for the juvenile but had to stop the around 10 p.m. due to a severe thunderstorm that was moving into the area, according to their press release.
Since then, the underwater search team has been combing through a nearly 4-mile stretch of the Vermilion River using two different types of SONAR equipment and a team of divers, says Captain Mike Hartshorn of the investigations unit with the Vermilion County Sheriff’s Department.
The search area extends from the Norfolk Southern rail bridge trestle near the Untouchables Motorcycle Club, where the boy went missing beneath the current, all the way down to the Red Bridge near the Danville Sanitation District on Grape Creek Road.
Though the current has been strong and fast, thanks to heavy rains over the past week, Hartshorn says search and recovery efforts don’t currently extend beyond Red Bridge.
“[Indiana] is a really, really long way to travel,” he says. “Now I’m not saying that it won’t expand out to that at some point, but for now, that’s too far.”
Members of the public have also been out searching for the boy, but the Danville Police Department urges concerned citizens to stay away from the river for now, according to a press release on Wednesday morning.
“We are asking the public to stay clear of the area and allow the Law Enforcement Teams to conduct their search of the water. It is important that members of the public stay away from the riverbanks in this area to avoid interference with the use of our equipment and to limit any further risk to members of the public,” a news release states.
The team of experienced divers and technicians is committed to finding the boy, no matter how long it takes, says Hartshorn.
“We’ll be out here until we find him,” he says.
Anyone who has information regarding this incident is asked to call Danville Police at (217) 431-2250, or the Vermilion County Crime Stoppers at (217) 446-TIPS.