Body found near bridge Fisherman had been missing since last week

LINCOLN – Mark Crosby will rest more easily now.

The 44-year-old East Millinocket man had hoped to be the one to find his missing brother after 42-year-old Wayne Crosby slipped from Mark Crosby’s grasp and disappeared into the swift currents of the Penobscot River below the Mattaseunk Dam in Mattawamkeag a week ago today.

Crosby has been among the searchers – Maine Game Warden Service divers and boaters, volunteer recovery group members and family friends – since they began looking Thursday morning for the body of his brother, who was presumed drowned almost immediately.

On Tuesday two out-of-state fishermen in a boat saw the body of the missing fisherman near Chester Bridge, about 13 miles downriver from where he was last seen, warden service officials said.

“I am glad. I’m exhausted,” Crosby said Tuesday. “We camped on the river right above the train trestle [bridge] in Mattawamkeag last night, and that’s about five or six miles away from where they found him.

“We have some closure to it. My mother and father are OK,” Crosby added. “I bawled my eyes out here but I am happy that we found him.”

The out-of-staters, whose names were not available, telephoned 911 when they saw the body in the water about 300 feet south of the bridge at about 3:30 p.m. The body was retrieved about 30 minutes later, said spokeswoman Deborah Turcotte of the Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife.

As many as a dozen wardens and more volunteers had been looking for the body by boat, airplane and in dive teams. Underwater obstacles, the powerful currents, rain and the river’s size hampered the search. Florida Power & Light Co., which operates the dam, helped by lowering the water level for several days, Turcotte said. Searchers found the canoe, paddles and other debris before the body’s recovery.

“He was a loyal brother,” Turcotte said Tuesday of Mark Crosby. “You could see his pain, the love he had for his brother. He was determined to find him.”

Crosby’s remains were taken to Clay Funeral Home in Lincoln. The body will be examined, probably today, by officials from the state medical examiner’s office, Turcotte said.

The fishing accident occurred the evening of June 11 when high winds, rough waters and the sudden cut-out of the canoe’s motor swamped the craft about 150 feet below the dam, dumping the Crosbys and Gilbert “Gibby” Chaloux Jr., 21, all of East Millinocket, into the river.

Chaloux braved the currents and his own fatigue and reached a Medway Road house. A resident there called 911 as Mark Crosby struggled to a midriver island, where firefighters rescued him. His attempts to save his brother failed when the rocky riverbed and exhaustion from battling the currents overcame him.

The Crosby family expressed gratitude to the wardens and other searchers; their friends, who stayed close; proprietors at Billy D’s Place, a private club off Route 157 that they used during the search; and the neighbors and strangers who gave them food, wrote cards and comforted them during their six-day ordeal. Crosby said his friends Andy Murray and Kevin Day and his uncle Ken Clark were especially helpful.

“We would never have gotten through it without so much help,” said Mark Crosby’s girlfriend, Michelle Jacobs.

Crosby plans to remember his brother in a special way.

“I am going to have a plaque put right on the canoe,” he said, “maybe with a picture, and I’ll have his name right where he was sitting when it happened.”

In that way, Crosby said, his brother will always be with him on the river.

nsambides@bangordailynews.net

794-8215