Searchers scour river for Idaho official

THE DALLES, Ore. – An Idaho man missing after two traffic accidents on Interstate 84 might have leaped over a bridge railing not knowing that he was about to fall 35 feet into a swiftly flowing river, an Oregon State Police spokeswoman said.

Searchers pulled a sonar device at the end of a cable through the mouth of the John Day River on Tuesday, hoping to find John Dickinson, a Moscow city councilman. The river is more than 80 feet deep in the area of the crash and the surface water temperature is 40 degrees, police said. Searchers said the river is too deep for diving.

Dickinson, 62, stopped his car on the bridge east of The Dalles on Sunday night to avoid hitting a car that had gone out of control.

He got out to offer help, and a third car struck his vehicle from behind.

Sgt. Julie Wilcox, state police spokeswoman, said the evidence suggests he jumped to avoid the second accident and was not knocked off the bridge.

Had Dickinson been struck, Wilcox said, he probably would have been knocked out of his clogs, which weren’t found at the accident scene.

Wilcox said that in the dark, there’s little at the accident scene to suggest that it’s on a bridge. “Odds are, you’re not going to know,” she said.

The fall alone would be a significant impact, most likely knocking a person unconscious, she said.

“And then you have to add in the dark, the strong current and then the temperature of the water,” Wilcox said. “It wouldn’t take much for a person not to be able to survive in that type of environment.”