Boy’s father places no blame
The father of a 7-year-old boy missing since a boating accident Friday said there is no one to blame for the Pend Oreille River tragedy.
“It was 100 percent accident,” said Tim Mason, director of the Riverview Bible Camp, where the accident occurred near Cusick, Wash.
Mason was driving a boat that was towing his son, Jordan, and a 17-year-old girl on a tube about 7:30 p.m. when the children were struck by another boat driven by a female employee of the camp.
“My boat was going one way, and her boat was going the other,” Mason said. “No one was messing around. She just didn’t see him. I know because I saw the whole thing.”
Authorities have identified neither the driver of the other boat nor the teenager, who was treated at a hospital for lacerations. Mason said he and the other driver were among those who jumped into the river immediately to find Jordan, whose life jacket was torn off in the collision.
On Wednesday, workers from the Pend Oreille County Public Utility District completed a routine cleaning of all four intake gates leading to the turbines at Box Canyon Dam, more than 20 miles downstream of the accident scene, but were unable to locate the child, said Eileen Dugger, the PUD’s public information officer.
“They took extreme care in the process,” she said, adding that it’s highly unlikely that the boy went through the dam.
Though Mason said he has not been able to bring himself to return to the camp since the accident, family and friends have not stopped searching for the boy since Friday.
“They are looking for him out of love, and they are doing the best they can,” Mason said, adding, “They must be so tired.”
On Monday, Gene Ralston, of Boise, whose boat is equipped with side-scan radar, joined the Pend Oreille County Sheriff’s Office and other agencies that have been searching just downstream of the accident scene.
Today, searchers will focus farther downstream toward Ione, Pend Oreille County sheriff’s Sgt. Alan Botzheim said. The Pend Oreille River flows north.
Mason expressed his gratitude to family and friends, including members of Spokane’s Fourth Memorial Church, which runs the camp, for searching and for providing comfort to him, his wife, Katrina, and Jordan’s two brothers, Justin, 4, and Jonathan, 2.
“They couldn’t have had a better big brother,” Mason said. “He didn’t have a down day; he didn’t have a down minute in his life.”
Mason, a pastor of the nondenominational church, said he had no doubt that his son was in heaven, he was so innocent.
“How could he not be?” his father said.
A memorial service is planned for 3 p.m. today at Fourth Memorial Church, 2000 N. Standard.