Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: FRIDAY, July 6, 1990                   TAG: 9007060455
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: B-2   EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY 
SOURCE: By NEAL THOMPSON NEW RIVER VALLEY BUREAU
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Short

MAN DROWNS WHILE SWIMMING AT SHUMATE FALLS

It was the second drowning in less than a week at the rapid section of the river.

William Whitt of Princeton, W.Va., was pulled from the water by rescue workers about 8 p.m., 2 1/2 hours after his brother-in-law, Carl Sayer, also of West Virginia, watched him go under, said Rodney Freeman of the Giles County Rescue Squad.

Whitt was pronounced dead at the scene.

Sayer told rescue workers that Whitt had been swimming in shallow water in the middle of the river when Sayer heard him call for help. "Then he went down and didn't come back up," Freeman said Sayer told the workers.

Nearly 20 rescue workers, including two divers, searched until one of two crews searching in rescue boats found Whitt's body in about 10 feet of water. It was the fourth drowning in the vicinity in five years.

"We tell people not to go down there, but they still go down. And this is what happens," Freeman said. "The water is as rough as it can be, it's so swift down there."

Last Friday, a 19-year-old West Virginia man drowned at Shumate Falls while swimming with family and friends.

Freeman said he doesn't expect the two recent drownings to deter people from going to the falls.

"It's not going to make people stop. It's been going on for years," he said. "They just don't take the river seriously, I guess."

Keywords:
FATALITY