SWEETWATER COUNTY, WYO – A boat capsized in Flaming Gorge over the weekend sending three men into the water. One man was drowned while two others were rescued.
Sweetwater County Sheriff Mike Lowell said the incident happened early morning on Sunday, June 24. The accident involved three men fishing in a small boat south of the Buckboard Marina.
Sheriff’s deputies and Wyoming Game and Fish wardens rescued two of the men and recovered the body of a Utah man, who is believed to have drowned.
Adverse weather is believed to have been a factor. An isolated squall popped up and waves reportedly swamped the boat.
The victim’s name was not released by authorities but Buckrail has learned the man was Lance Heninger, 48, of North Ogden, Utah.
Lowell said the victim and two companions, Carson West of North Ogden, and Scott Gorder of Ogden, were fishing from Gorder’s boat late Saturday afternoon about 3½ miles southeast of Buckboard Marina when the mishap occurred.
The three men launched their boat from Buckboard early Saturday morning and were competing in the Ducks Unlimited Fishing Derby. They were last known to be fishing in the Big Bend Area.
When the men had not returned to a residence in Manila as planned by late Saturday night, concerned family and friends checked the parking lot at Buckboard and there found their pickup and empty boat trailer. It was then, around midnight, that the Sheriff’s Office was notified.
Lowell said Corporal Steve Powell and Deputy Sheriff Chris Sutton of the Sheriff’s Office Marine Unit, accompanied by Colter Kofoed, a Sheriff’s Office intern, left Buckboard aboard the Sheriff’s Office patrol boat, which is kept docked there, and commenced a search. At about 1:30am, the deputies found West on the Gorge’s east shore. About 15 minutes later they located Gorder, who had been in the water for about 10 hours. Both men were taken aboard the patrol boat and back across the lake to Buckboard, and from there to Memorial Hospital of Sweetwater County in Rock Springs, where they were treated and released.
Gorder and West told deputies that at around 4:00pm on Saturday, while they were fishing, the wind picked up violently and the water became very choppy. One wave swamped the boat and the men began bailing, but another wave swamped the craft completely and all three went into the water.
While Gorder and West were wearing PFDs (Personal Floatation Devices), Heninger was not.
With Gorder and West handed over to ambulance personnel at Buckboard. The Marine Unit was joined by wardens of the Wyoming Game & Fish Department in their own boat. Joint agencies returned to the search and found Heninger’s body in a cove along the Gorge’s east bank at about 4:00am.
Lowell said the Sheriff’s Office’s investigation is continuing.
