A weekend fishing trip for two Caroline County friends turned fatal yesterday when their bodies were discovered by police divers in an isolated Westmoreland County pond.
Date published: 7/29/2008
BY FRANK DELANO
A weekend fishing trip for two Caroline County friends turned fatal yesterday when their bodies were discovered by police divers in an isolated Westmoreland County pond.
Oscar Jones Jr., 29, and Norman Gill, 42, both of Ladysmith, were participating in a fishing tournament Saturday to raise money for cancer victims, said Oscar Jones Sr.
They hauled Gill’s 12-foot johnboat and electric motor in the back of a pickup truck more than 40 miles to the pond near Oak Grove. When they didn’t come home Saturday afternoon, family members went looking for them.
The 75-acre pond, sometimes called Bowie’s Pond, is a half-mile down a farm lane beside pastures and vegetable fields off State Route 664 near Ebb Tide Beach. When the family found the pond late Saturday afternoon, they found Gill’s empty pickup parked near the pond.
Jones and Gill were both big men. Each of them weighed 250 pounds or more, police said. They would have sat high on the boat’s two pedestal seats. The boat would have been easy to tip, police said.
One of the seats appeared to have broken, said Virginia Conservation Police Sgt. Richard Goszka.
No personal flotation devices were on board or on the men when their bodies were found, Goszka said.
Jones’ and Gill’s families and friends gathered at the pond Sunday while police and rescue crews from many agencies searched for the missing men all day.
Sunday morning, the boat was found mostly submerged. Only its bow showed above the water. A hat belonging to one of the men was also found. An evening storm interrupted the search.
Maryland divers began searching Sunday. The Virginia State Police Search and Recovery Dive Team helped searched yesterday. The families and friends comforted each other in the shade of the trees on the shore.
“Just waiting. That’s the hard part,” Oscar Jones Sr. said yesterday morning. “But we’re going to wait until we know something definite. We hope and pray they’re all right.”
“It was a diver’s nightmare,” said Sgt. Goszka. He said the bottom of the pond was a submerged forest of tree branches, limbs, sticks and snags. The divers used side-scan sonar to find the bodies, he said.
Gill’s body was recovered about 12:30 p.m. yesterday. About three hours later, Jones’ body was found about 20 feet away, caught in an underwater branch, said Goszka.
When the bodies of the men were brought to shore, the families prayed together.