Divers recover body in Long Lake Truck falls through ice pressure ridge, 72-year-old drowns

SINCLAIR – Divers on Friday afternoon recovered the body of a 72-year-old fisherman whose pickup truck went through the ice on Long Lake sometime Friday morning.

The body of Richard Daigle of Sinclair was recovered at 3:43 p.m. about 15 feet from his pickup truck under 87 feet of water, about three-quarters of a mile from shore.

Diver Sgt. Fred Jackson of the Maine Warden Service found the body, after two dives were made by Sgt. David McPherson of the Maine State Police.

Lt. Mike Marshall of the Maine Warden Service said Daigle’s body was found about a half-hour after divers started their search.

Divers indicated that, under such conditions, a body can’t be seen until the diver is right on it.

Mark Latti, spokesman for the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife, said Daigle’s half-ton Ford pickup truck apparently broke through the ice as Daigle drove across a pressure ridge.

A pressure ridge is a crack in the ice formed when sections of ice expand and push against one another. A ridge can be several feet higher that the main body of ice. Water moving below the ridge can make the ice thinner in that spot. Ice on the main lake is 12 inches to 13 inches thick, Latti said.

About a half-dozen such ridges run across the lake, a local lodge owner said Friday.

Wardens who reconstructed the accident determined that Daigle initially stopped about 50 feet from the ridge and walked up to it before returning to his truck and driving across the ridge.

Daigle had driven his truck onto the lake Thursday to fish for cusk and last was seen at about 12:30 a.m. Friday by his friend and longtime fishing companion Roger Hebert, 56, of St. Agatha.

When Daigle didn’t return home, a family member contacted Hebert, who went to look for Daigle.

“That was the first I knew he was missing,” said Hebert as he watched the recovery effort from a heated pickup truck on shore.

Hebert followed Daigle’s tire tracks to a hole near the pressure ridge.

“I was very shocked,” he said, visibly upset by the loss of his friend.

“The whole thing really surprises me, that he stopped and decided to keep going,” Hebert said. “He should have known better.”

Daigle, who owned a Johnson outboard motor dealership in the area in the 1970s, was familiar with the lake, according to friends and a relative.

Ken Martin, owner of the Long Lake Sporting Club, which served as the staging area for the recovery effort, recalled Daigle as a helpful man.

“He helped me many times with my motors or getting people unstuck,” he said as he watched wardens ready the site for divers.

The Maine Warden Service was notified at about 6:30 a.m. Friday that Daigle was missing, and Wardens Brad Richard and Gary Sibley went to the lake. Latti said the wardens walked out onto the ice, where they found a hat, a spare tire and some fish floating on the water in an open hole at the pressure ridge.

Latti said Daigle’s truck was left in the water. He did not know when it would be removed.

NEWS correspondent Julia Bayly contributed to this story.