Missing man’s body found in Potomac

Friday, July 18, 2008

Click here to enlarge this photo Staff photo by GARY SMITH The fire and rescue boat from Potomac Heights Volunteer Fire Department, left, arrives at the Aqualand Marina at the close of search operations Monday afternoon for two missing canoeists. The office of the state medical examiner declared the two men’s deaths accidental and said they drowned. The Potomac Heights department also recovered the body of an Indian Head man from the river Wednesday. At right, the Colonial Beach volunteer rescue squad boat gets ready to cross the Potomac River to its Virginia station. E-Mail This Article | Print This Story

According to Turner, Stanley Jay Langley, 51, of Indian Head disappeared Monday night after heading out alone for a fishing trip on his 17-foot boat.

Langley’s wife reported him missing at about 11 p.m., telling authorities she hadn’t heard from her husband since they spoke on the phone nearly four hours earlier, Turner said.

At about 11:50 p.m., a Maryland Department of Natural Resources police officer found the 17-foot boat adrift about two miles downstream from the Marshall Hall ramp in Bryans Road where Langley put in. The missing man was not inside, according to Turner.

‘‘We searched all night long. The search stopped Tuesday evening at dark,” Turner said.

Authorities kept searching until Wednesday at about 12:35 p.m., when the Potomac Heights Volunteer Fire Department recovered Langley’s body about two miles away from Marshall Hall, Turner said.

Langley’s family and friends waited in lawn chairs next to the Marshall Hall boat ramp every day of the search, Turner said. ‘‘When I left, Mrs. Langley was still there,” Turner said.

Langley’s body was sent to the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner in Baltimore for an autopsy, he said.

Charles County fire departments, Virginia fire departments, the National Park Police, the U.S. Coast Guard, Maryland Natural Resources Police, Charles County Dive Rescue Team, Charles County Sheriff’s Office and the Prince George’s County police and fire departments helped in the search, according to Turner.

Earlier this week, two canoeists went missing after setting out from Wayside Park in Virginia for a Sunday afternoon fishing trip. The bodies of Jose Alexander, 33, and Juan C. Lopez, 35 were found Monday in the Potomac River near Aqualand in Newburg. The medical examiner has ruled their cause of death as drowning, and the manner of death as an accident. In Queen Anne’s County, the body of a 35-year-old boater from Baltimore was recovered Tuesday near Chester River, according to Turner.

‘‘This is very, very unusual. Three days, four deaths ... fortunately, that just doesn’t happen often in Maryland water,” he said.

‘‘It’s taxing, but we do what we have to do,” said William ‘‘Skeeter” Porter, chief of the Charles County Dive Rescue Team, about the back-to-back search efforts.

In addition, a Bryans Road man, Stephen Raymond Barnes Sr., 37, died June 24 after he fell off the personal watercraft he was driving on the Port Tobacco River near Chapel Point State Park.

Porter said such closely occurring tragedies seem to happen periodically. ‘‘It kind of comes and goes. The summer of ’05 was really bad,” Porter said.