Port Orchard teen’s body remains lost to the Ohanapecosh River

By Sharyn  L. Decker
Lewis County Sirens news reporter

CHEHALIS – The Lewis County Sheriff’s Office said yesterday the 17-year-old boy who was swept away in the Ohanapecosh River on the Fourth of July hasn’t turned up and no further searches are planned.

“We’re really going to have to rely on somebody recreating finding something,” sheriff’s Cmdr. Steve Aust said.

The Port Orchard teen was taking photos with friends slipped and fell into the cold, fast moving river near the Cedar Grove Campground off state Route 123 just south of the entrance to Mount Rainier National Park, according to the sheriff’s office.

Searchers with the sheriff’s swift water rescue team and rangers from the national park searched for the boy over that weekend with no success.

Aust said it’s an especially treacherous waterway, with steep canyon walls and class five rapids, where the risks to personnel outweigh the likelihood of finding a body.

“It’s not a place where you can expect to walk along the bank and see anything much anyhow,” he said.

The sheriff’s office has a group of kayakers they are in touch with and had them look as they went down the river over the weekend, he said. For perspective, he recommended a You Tube video of the area shot last year by the same group when the water level was about four feet lower than it is now.

The Kitsap Sun reported several hundred people filled the bleachers at the high school stadium, when a gathering was held last week to remember Josh Osborn, a wide receiver for the football team.

It’s been a bad year for drownings in the area.

The same day Osborn drowned in the East Lewis County, an 18-year-old Tacoma resident,  Rashawn J. Hale-Moody, drowned in Alder Lake, at the intersection of Lewis, Thurston and Pierce counties.

Last month, another Tacoma teen drowned in the Chehalis River at Rainbow Falls State Park west of Chehalis. Seventeen-year-old Linsey Mike had only recently immigrated from Nigeria and told friends he wasn’t a good swimmer.

In May, a 5-year-old Tacoma boy riding a motorcycle next to the CIspus River near Randle lost his life when he was swept away. Drake Ostenson’s body was recovered four days later.

And in April, a 46-year-old Gary L. Rhoades of Mineral drowned in Lake Mayfield during a fishing outing when he jumped in the water to retrieve his boat as it drifted away.

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One Response to “Port Orchard teen’s body remains lost to the Ohanapecosh River”

  1. Free Air says:

    if memory serves this same stretch of river also took a life about this time last year.