#BringAbigaelHome - MISSING PERSON in Willamette River

[Music] today is one of those uh nervous days for me like a lot of times you see us out getting cars but unfortunately we are here because alicia and matt flew all the way in from pennsylvania because on wednesday yes um abigail abigail who's lived in here in springfield for the past two years yes um was actually swimming in the river on wednesday and from there please to please tell us the story as to what happened from our understanding abigail went for a swim and she had two friends on shore who had their back turned to her and a bystander noticed that she went underwater and never resurfaced so uh the bystanders one that called 9-1-1 and nobody has seen her since so she went underwater just right in the outcrop over here local authorities search and rescue has been searching for the past four days and we've had no news at all um so with that you know we're going to do everything we can to search this area in fact we'll throw the drone in the air showing you some spots right now kind of talking about the location you said it was a up by the tree where kind of where the current is uh stopping right there right where the rapids are stopping and so that was the last season how far out from the bank we don't have that information we don't you know i'm assuming from there it's up to about your knees and then it drops really deep okay so and she was a tad bit taller than me so okay um so with that you know the thing is with a couple of things one is when bodies go under water you know you go down 10 15 feet and things start to collapse and so the thing that i'm really hoping for this area that it gets deep right there is that she's in that area that she's not left the area and she never came over where the rapids are you know thin again because no no i mean everybody had eyes on it right from there once you went underwater no one saw her again yeah she never came up again yeah so we have so we have that that's the good news is that we have shallows in this river that with any luck she's going to be in that area still we have a new 360 sonar um thank you to you fans uh as well as you know that's the other thing i want to touch on real quick as well you know is the you as the family letting us record and document what's going on here today because it's the viewers you know that are reached out to us it was a friend of your family yeah this is the abigail's best friend yeah that actually reached out to us because they've seen us online they see to see what we do absolutely and so by allowing us to spread the message of what we're doing yes 100 transparency we make money on these videos because youtube and facebook you know we place ads on them so please watch the ads because it helps us come out here it helps with the sponsors that help us out you know you're going to see a boat you're going to see a motor you're going to see sonar equipment that we have today that had we if we were not doing youtube or facebook we would not have any of that nor the time to be out here today yes and they are bringing you to us yes and hopefully giving us a chance to bring you back so i thank you alicia and matt and their entire family thank you for letting us be out here today and this is i mean this this one really hits home for me as well i have a 20 year old daughter i have a 23 year old daughter and abigail is 22. yeah so we're going to do everything we can for you thank you with that we're not gonna ramble on we're gonna get in the water thank you very much you're welcome [Music] what you're saying right where those inner tubers at is where they were hanging out at yeah so that's so this is the farthest tree right there where he's in the wrap okay and i think that's a shaded area there right matt we came down through these trees and then walk down those rocks and still right there you guys were out here with her no the police brought us over here just yesterday and showed us that that's where the bystander told us told them that that's where she was okay and that's where her clothes were found okay so she went out into there and then dropped it yeah so i mean really good news here okay in my opinion and again i mean i am so hopeful on this one because take a look at this see how the eddy is okay so you have the kayaker there that's messing around in the eddies he's coming out and normally like i said when somebody goes underwater they go straight down you know with a little bit of current but if by chance see that eddie on how it's coming back in i mean i am really hopeful that she's just kind of stuck up in there wow but if she happened to have kicked out you know the next thing that we have is see how it's shallow over here but it's deeper over here so which is right over here on the side of the island so so that's another place to look but see then take a look at this what i really like is see how shallow it gets i mean you have a ton of eyes that have been out here and i think that's shallow enough that you can just walk across but i don't think that uh i don't think she pushed through there if she did i think that she would have sucked in somewhere in these areas and i don't think that she would have made it that far down so that's kind of my hope for all this today thank you to uh all the uh all the volunteers that reach out uh across the entire us mac is one of them that reached i hate how long ago did you even reach out months ago a month ago or two yeah okay so mac reached out and said hey if you're ever over in my area you need help you need to volunteer you know get a hold of me well today as i'm in route you know because i got the phone call this morning from your family said you know i'm like mac can you be there for me and he's like i'm there so if you happen to have any skills you know mac's got some swift water rescue training some people have trucks winches drop me an email as well because you never know if we're going to be in your neck of the woods we can definitely use your help and you know abigail's family and other families across the u.s that we can go help really appreciate your guys's generosity to be there for us as well so mac thank you for being here today he's going to run camera with me he's also gonna be on the boat with me with that let's go uh wire in that new sonar mac and uh get the boat in the water hey look mack something good is gonna happen today it was crazy mac there's so many spots along the river people often ask me you know hey can you find so-and-so i'm like what's the current like what's the depth what's the visibility because i mean like you said you could drop right away you could be you know like you said down to salem right now which is another uh 100 miles from here as the river flows so i've been over that hole a couple of times now it goes down to 12 and a half feet and let me just look at the way that it's swirling right there chris i mean you're a kayaker you've been on the river a long time it's i mean i swam it too so like yeah it's snarling right there so i mean talk about this every time i even take the boat over it you have a big heavy swirl right here and if she put in right where those two are hanging out without a life vest she comes out there she gets stuck in that swirl and my my sonar is picking up every time i go over that hole there is something that's roughly four feet in that hole okay that does not appear to it should not be in that hole and if you look at the way the river's running also if she would have gone down from there she would have gone to the right of this island look at the way the current is going based on where she went in i was i've been there all the past two mornings too like yeah like where you're talking about yeah so strong current strong eddie you're not going to break out of that eddie see where the people are at on the show over there there's no way she would have broken out that far if she was on this side of it and some of the things i've heard from local professionals and stuff like people who've gone through experience with people like drowning in rivers like the first thing that they say is that uh that the body drops and it goes down yeah so that's what i've been told i think she's 12 feet 12 to 14 14 feet down right there i'm not making any promises don't need any we're just grateful chris tell you what i found all right there's something okay so and we're grateful the other search and rescues are all gone see where that strongest whirlpool is at right there every time i go over that i have an anomaly that i've hit this at several different angles so here's what we're looking at you're looking at something that is roughly four four and a half to five feet tall that this is picking up but remember i'm also hitting a current every time i'm coming through here so it's throwing my transom or my transducer all over the place but i've you know i've done uh chirp sonar i've done down imaging i've done uh side imaging on it and every time right at the very bottom of the hole that makes perfect sense so you got it it's worth diving on so i'm gonna go suit up that's amazing all right so we got a gym here with the local sheriff's search and rescue it's his day off so he's back out here and i you know and i guess if you don't mind answering for that if no to answer just say i can't answer that one on camera but a lot of the viewers always ask how come the sheriff's you know and the search and rescue doesn't put forth more of an effort and it's like us that do we come out as civilians to do this so you're you're in the know they put forth a lot more effort than it seems uh we've actually been out here the divers have been i've been out here personally two different days on boats with the sheriff's office diving all kinds of holes and then they've been out here every day on boats checking everything they can on boats going up and down checking the shorelines you know checking for snags checking everything they can see most of this with the clarity of the water you can see at least eight to ten feet deep which is most the river so they're they're checking every single day along with the fire department and um we've dove in almost all these deep holes between here and about four miles down okay so i mean they're doing quite a bit but it's also the dive team for instance search and rescue is volunteer services so you've got to have a certain amount of people available right so i mean to me you know you always go back to the beginning you always start there you know and this is so this is day one for me although you're like day five or six into this yeah so i mean you've already been in this hole i've been in the whole at least three times myself but i've snorkeled it three times and i can snorkel to the bottom so i've been across the bottom okay but that's snorkeling you could always miss something snorkeling okay uh the initial search uh was done at night because that's when it happened okay um that was with lights and so so i'm hitting the hole of 15 feet here you've been in the hole at 15 feet yes okay yeah but like i said there's there's current stuff moves around so you know it'd be better with two people with tanks in the daytime right yeah put a piece of mind out there yeah for sure i mean i picked up something on sonar uh we we're gonna run the 360 today uh brand new so we didn't have it i got the phone call this morning so we threw the side sand and the down imaging on so like i said there's something that's you know roughly four and a half feet that's sticking up right in the dead center right now yeah and i think there's a big boulder okay right pretty close if i recall okay i think that's what we're gonna find but i'm more than happy to go back in and check and make sure okay we are forever grateful we're so far away from this it's so removed into how people like both of you do this yeah it's just you know it's a whole nother world and you love it you know you absolutely love being underwater people like you have restored my faith in humanity like there's a lot of ugliness out in the world right now a lot of division a lot of hate one of the other things we say among divers you know we bloody die but we solo dive means that you know he's down there but i am not relying on you to save me and you're not really i want me to save you i mean it's in theory that's what you learn when you become a diver is always buddy dive stay within you you know close enough you can grab each other's air exactly but be self-reliant yeah so as far as air if you need it i mean i got it here okay i'm running full face so yeah and i've got my alternate hooked on right here beautiful radio check ready to check we got toms we got radio all right well we just locked drop into the hole here so nice thing is uh we have some nice clarity today i'm current there we're gonna head back upstream that water's right in there stuck in a rock [Applause] [Laughter] [Applause] right now i'm just letting my body float take me wherever it takes me we saw jared downstream quite a bit what's that jared was way down there is he okay how are you doing i'm doing good put the like down there well it spins you around pretty good it shoots you across the bottom real fast but once you once you dive into the current man it just takes you like looks like you're flying what are you seeing down there just a lot of big rocks in the beginning and then it turns to round rocks [Applause] about halfway through just turns these normal these normal river round rocks i don't see anything that she can get hung up on so i'm not sure there's two more big holes down there where that big tree is kind of hanging over and there is some snags in there that was my first thought um but i checked those two and i we didn't see her there either [Applause] if he gets caught up in the current he just kicks over the side over here it also gets pretty shallow down there there's a lot of area to swim over to to get out and he's a he's a really good swimmer so i know i know he'll be okay he just might not be able to make it back up here all right let me make it all right so we're down across the foot ramp so so so uh oh he kept looking up here oh no i i ended up all the way down past the uh rope swing past the boat ramp so what i did is i i kind of pushed farther out where the uh kind of kind of the max of where she would have been and i just let the current take me to see where i would end up and then i ended up in another big 20-foot hole down there but i searched that one good too so what i'm going to do now is got back in here again i know the gym scouted pretty good there's another section i want to check real quick and then i want to push right at this island over here yeah you can point the area for me as to where they saw her go down from the side and yeah um apparently um sheriffs have those details but we don't like right where that person's swimming there i mean telling you that yes specifically there i wouldn't be like i i don't like honestly know that i'll tell you what i want to do mac is i want to because i searched the hole here but i mean you've been on the water long enough too but uh what kind of rivers do you guys have back where you're at creeks so nothing like this so so like mac and i were talking earlier that uh what chris just told me if she happened to put in upper above the tree at all that shallow enough if they saw her go under she could have just caught her leg and it pinned her and she went down if nobody searched above there so i'm going to put in above there then and float it down through there and then i'll search this hole again and then the right of the island thoughts from you mac what's that thoughts from you oh i think you got the right idea on the lake entrapment you know one of the things mac is uh you know that boat that we found in the columbia river it was kind of the same scenario where it was 25 feet heard 50 feet upstream from where they'd been looking they looked you know miles and miles downstream but they never looked 50 feet up and you just never know anywhere it could be [Applause] so so now what happened talk to me honey talk to me oh where'd you go from here where are you gonna go deepest part of the hole now we're having help you good you're good are you just swirling if i hang out here we'll talk about that [Applause] how far you make it now uh i went down and checked both the deep holes that were below the boat launch the uh where the rope swing is at yeah yeah i made it down there too yeah i was really surprised that under uh current yeah it takes you to the left of the island not right i thought it was gonna take you right for sure oh yeah yeah it's deceiving there's actually another one up here that looks like it's gonna take you to the left and then it just throws you to the right huh wow yeah i mean this thing just swirls i mean i was in there three or four times now yeah and i thought for sure maybe i'm just swirling with her but uh i even hung out for a little bit and then i leave went above the tree too to see if you know if she did go in at the tree if she would have caught herself but you said you were snorkeling up there right yeah we we actually took and made a neutrally buoyant jug and i threw it on a buoy we threw it in right up here and we followed it all the way down this river and it went right down the center and we kept thinking it was going to go into one of these channels and it didn't it kept staying right in the dead center and i mean it was flying it got so far we stopped for a second to look at something it was gone right we couldn't we couldn't catch up to it so at this point i'm going to force my i mean you've been rid of the island yeah i've actually walked i've walked every single channel like that that's out here i've gotten out and walked it with my diaper or my snorkeling gear on right but i've walked it and checked every single log yeah i mean spent a lot of time on every one of these channels yeah and you really have to be careful too and jim can attest to this but i mean if you're diving this i mean you cannot be head first going through some of these faster the faster stuff here no no some of these just all of a sudden you'll come up upon a big rock yeah i mean you got it feet first feet up you know you got to be careful about it yeah so and that's what i that's what i experienced with uh heading down through there to that uh where the rope swing is at just feet first and then just kind of keep scanning there i wish i had better news at this point like this one was i if i had to put money on it i mean i would have been 98 sure on this hole yeah that's kind of where you guys were at to begin with too yeah we absolutely thought yeah it's a good shot because it does it does have a really nice circulation right there so yeah but yeah if not then i mean we're looking at you know five miles to 100 miles yeah it's hard to say because it does get deeper and 10 miles down the mackenzie runs into it which is another big river and that's where it gets to be a pretty good-sized river right i like to just be very black and white and very transparent [Applause] if she's not snagged somewhere and she's still floating i mean you're looking at one somebody has to be in the right spot the right time when she does float but she's only going to be floating for roughly 48 hours when she does float and that can happen any time depending on the water temperature and her size and how much you know meat she has on her bones it could happen anywhere from two to three days to you know two to three weeks if she does you know skinnier people don't have the problem so you know if you're scared so what does it mean if they're smaller and you don't if they're smaller they will they don't have the buoyancy to float when they start off-gassing in the same fashion that larger people do too yeah so that's the other reality of this as well she won't float the lawn yeah okay so yeah all right i didn't mean that we got it now yeah i mean i i don't mean to say the wrong things but i'd like to just be very transparent black and white that's why we're here yeah and i appreciate it yeah so i'm gonna do what i can you know we still have some some daylight left we still have some air so let me search this a little bit more thank you guys so much yeah so much yeah i mean we we hope that we have good answers for you today still you know whatever whatever we have to do we'll do we'll get through all right that's where i'm at give her a hug yes i'm i'm fighting that current underneath just to get over here to the right i don't see how there's any way she would have made it right of the island there mac so i mean like jim was saying i mean they ran that neutrally buoyant marker four and a half miles downstream it never left the center so mac this is your river this is your territory end of day final thoughts on this one well i think our search and rescue teams and you have done a very good job of doing a fairly exhaustive search of the holes and the areas in this river in this immediate vicinity and while you know the possibility does exist that you can be in some of these dark um spots in the river uh like uh everybody said they put a buoy in the middle of the water and it floated all the way downstream so there's some spots way down there and just as we start getting into town and get under some of our bridges where the water starts to slow down and to eddie out but uh more than likely she's made it a good ways of the way down the river and your theory at this point is uh salem which is a good 65 80 miles river from here somewhere between here and there but it's this this river's moving and if somebody gets in the water and there's nothing stopping them they'll keep on going long exhausting day for sure mentally physically mentally where's the family how's mom doing she's up and down she's okay sometimes it's harder for her to process things and hear things um but overall i think she is handling it very well yeah yeah and we just have to wait and see yeah you know and this whole process helps us to understand how much energy it takes to find somebody yeah because i mean we're dealing with uh wednesday thursday friday saturday sunday five days already this is only one day for us you know and i said i mean at this point we've exhausted the area where i feel like she would have been to where we are most valuable uh you know at this point like like we've acknowledged right you know and mac is acknowledged i mean we could be looking at a hundred plus miles now at this point as well it's nice to at least feel confident ruling this out moving on yeah so that's what we have to do so well i wish i could do more i wish that i had amazing answers for you today um we're not even going to be showing this unless we actually have a conclusion on this you know like we see something on the news you you'll update me i mean you guys are gonna know so please please text me definitely you know and for anybody that's watching this video i want you to understand search efforts take a lot of work you know and you can't win them all unfortunately and that's what we've tried to do today we tried to come in we tried to win this one for you sometimes the viewers get mad at us like jared why are you even showing this video you didn't win anything that day you didn't pull a vehicle you didn't find a body but you know this is the this is the process of wars that we do and we're here to help you know more people across the u.s so you know if you have any tips you have any family members we can't make them to everyone but we tried we cleared the area we gave you guys some type of resolution for this area absolutely like you said now we can move on from this area to move on to the next one and that it may be up to the river yeah at this point yeah so thank you thank you so much hey you're welcome just keep abigail in your thoughts we will thank you to everybody absolutely in fact we might even put this video out you know so that way anybody that's here in central or here in uh along the willamette between springfield and in fact that's what we're gonna do we're gonna go ahead and release this video um right now and the reason for it and keep the awareness yeah that abigail is out there and if you come to the riverbank just to enjoy the beautiful scenery keep your eyes peeled yeah she's gonna come so everybody between springfield and portland uh get out to the river this week uh kayaks paddle boards whatever you have make sure you're wearing like your life jacket too please wear a life jacket please yep so get out there on the river this week right now um i'm gonna do everything i can to get this video up tomorrow for you guys then so that way we can spread the word thank you that's what this has turned into is spreading the word for having also bring in fact we're going to title this bring abigail home wonderful so thank you you're welcome thanks for letting us be a part of it absolutely all right i have no other words that's it thank you for uh watching uh everything that we do and uh the efforts we put forth if you've not really done so be sure to subscribe if you're in oregon and you have the opportunity please get out of the river right now help bring abigail home uh let's all do our part to uh you know help bring a resolution for this family that's it for now later later bye you

Channel: Adventures with Purpose

Views: 1,823,326

Rating: 4.9278078 out of 5

Keywords: abigael bellows, abigael bellows missing, missing persons, missing persons cases, scuba diving, river diving, dangerous diving, dangerous scuba, dangerous scuba diving, searching missing person in river, underwater communication system, underwater communication, full face dive mask, search and rescue, search and recovery, adventures with purpose

Id: cp2Ksw3OgWQ

Length: 34min 41sec (2081 seconds)

Published: Mon Jul 27 2020