THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1997, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Monday, January 13, 1997 TAG: 9701130042
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY ANNE SAITA AND STEVE STONE, STAFF WRITERS
DATELINE: COINJOCK LENGTH: 149 lines
It was to have been a father-son outing on Currituck Sound. Two longtime buddies, their boys - ages 6 and 8 - and a Labrador retriever, off to hunt ducks on Monkey Island with a friend from Hampton Roads.
Instead, it became a fight for survival that took a horrible toll.
One man lived, defying the odds for 14 hours in near-freezing waters. But his son died in his arms about 90 minutes after their boat swamped early Saturday. And as he weakened over the following hours, the man couldn't even keep hold of the boy's body.
And there was nothing he could do as he watched his friends slip away in the icy waters.
The bodies of both boys and the father of one of them were recovered, the Coast Guard said. The fifth member of the hunting party was still missing at dusk Sunday. He is presumed to have died.
The Coast Guard identified the dead as John Milton Melson, 33, and his son, John Sidney Melson, 6, of Coinjock, and Michael Shawn LaBounty II, 8, of Moyock.
The missing man was identified as Philip Boedker, 51, of Chesapeake. The search for him was suspended Sunday afternoon.
The survivor, Michael LaBounty of Moyock, was treated overnight at Albemarle Hospital for extreme hypothermia. He was transferred Sunday to another hospital for additional care.
Amidst the tragedy, some people focused on the miracle Sunday. How could one man live in waters so cold for so long?
The water temperature was 40 degrees, the Coast Guard said. The air temperature was 36. There were winds of 30 mph to make it chillier.
The survival time for a person in such conditions is between 30 minutes and 2 1/2 hours, said Petty Officer Brandon Brewer, a Coast Guard spokesman in Portsmouth.
``I can't remember anything similar where somebody stayed alive that long .
LaBounty, who is in his mid-30s, was wearing waist-high, Neoprene waders that may have helped retain body heat, Brewer said. Still, ``even with them being Neoprene, that's an incredibly long time.''
LaBounty was rescued about two hours after the Coast Guard was alerted. But the boat had swamped much earlier - and 12 hours had passed before anyone ashore knew they were in trouble.
The five had set out at 5:30 a.m. on a familiar course. They left in a 17-foot Polar craft, planning to travel about six miles to Monkey Island where they had a duck blind set up.
They brought along all they needed - shotguns, decoys and Winchester, a 5-year-old, chocolate Labrador retriever. The boys put on life vests. The men did not.
It wasn't the nicest of days when they left the boat ramp in Waterlily, witnesses said later. But there was no hint of what faced them out on the sound. The weather apparently worsened as they approached the Corolla side of the sound.
Waves were running at 4 to 5 feet. The winds were gusting. Still, the men were experienced and had been out on the sound many times.
All of them were wearing heavy clothing, but, ``when you're in the water, clothing does not do you a lot of good,'' said Marshall Cherry, director of Corolla Fire & Rescue, which assisted in the search.
Exactly what went wrong was unclear Sunday night. There were reports, not confirmed by the Coast Guard, that the engine on the small craft had failed.
LaBounty told the Coast Guard the boat began taking on water about 7 a.m., just east of Monkey Island. It quickly overturned.
LaBounty grabbed his son and held him close. But, by 8:30 a.m., he said the youth had succumbed to the frigid waters. The elder Melson also had died. Currents had carried away the 6-year-old and Boedker.
LaBounty tried to tether his son's body to the overturned boat, but the line did not hold. A similar effort to tie Melson's body down also failed.
Soon, LaBounty was alone. He could only wait and hope that he would be missed, that help would come.
Jeff Snead, 26, of Nags Head was among the first to suspect something had happened when he found out late Saturday afternoon that the boat - with his uncle, John Melson, and Melson's son aboard - had not returned.
Snead first called LaBounty's wife, Shannon. She alerted the Coast Guard.
Snead got into his boat and headed for Monkey Island. By the time he arrived, a Coast Guard helicopter already was sweeping the area with a searchlight.
About 9 p.m., the pilot of the H-60 Jayhawk from Elizabeth City spotted LaBounty standing waist-deep in the water. The crew lowered a rescue basket and lifted him to the chopper.
``The very first thing he said was, `They're all dead. Everyone else is dead,' '' said 3rd Class Petty Officer John Williams, who helped haul him aboard.
As the helicopter set course for Albemarle Hospital in Elizabeth City, LaBounty told the crew where he thought they should look for the others. The crew got him out of his wet clothes, loaded him into a hypothermia capsule and began warming his body.
``He was just kind of talking, telling me everything about where he thought the kids were,'' Williams said. ``Once he got in the capsule, he started shivering kind of bad.''
Meanwhile, Snead had gone to his mother's house to pick up a friend to help with the search and then returned to the island.
``The very first place that I pulled into, I eased into the shore and jumped overboard,'' Snead said. ``And that's where I found the little one,'' 6-year-old John Sydney Melson. ``He was in the forest, about 25 feet into the edge of the marsh. He was wearing his life preserver, camouflage coveralls, gloves and boots.''
It was the first year the boy, who attended Griggs Elementary, had joined his father on hunting trips.
There was grief, but also a sense of comfort in the discovery, Snead said: At least a relative, not a stranger, had found the boy.
``I kinda lost it a bit, to start with,'' Snead said. ``Then something just clicked, and I said, `OK, I gotta do what I gotta do. I'm not leaving until I've found my uncle, too.' ''
It was the crew of a Coast Guard boat, however, that found the elder Melson a short time later. The body of Michael LaBounty II, a second-grade student at Northern Shores Elementary in Suffolk, was found Sunday about 8:20 a.m.
Brewer said local authorities plan to begin dragging the marshy, shallow waters of the sound near the island today in search of Boedker.
The dog has not been found, although no one has yet gone ashore at Monkey Island to look around, Brewer said.
The rough, freezing weather made the search difficult for those scanning waters - and proved a measure of what the hunting party had faced.
``It was so bitterly cold,'' Cherry said. ``The sound water wasn't frozen, but there was ice on and inside the boats from water spray freezing. You couldn't hardly stand up on the boats. It was very difficult.''
Cherry said his crews sometimes assist hunters stranded in the sound. ``We've had hypothermia cases before where a hunter will have had difficulty or a boat will break down,'' he said. But ``this is the worst case I can remember, especially when they were there for so long before they were discovered.''
The boat was found Sunday morning, its stern aground, the bow sticking out of the water, at Monkey Island, Brewer said.
It was towed back to where the trip had started, where friends and relatives were left to gather and share their grief.
Melson was a driver for Tarheel Distributing Co. in Elizabeth City. In addition to son John Sidney, Melson, and his wife, Sharon, he is survived by a 4-year-old son, Jeremy.
LaBounty's wife, Shannon, said her husband was recovering. ``He's doing the best that can be expected after losing a child,'' she said. MEMO: A memorial fund for the Melson family has been set up by Coinjock
Baptist Church. For information, call 453-4020. ILLUSTRATION: [Color Photo]
BILL TIERNAN
The Virginian-Pilot
A Coast Guard helicopter searches the waters of Currituck Sound off
Coinjock, N.C., Sunday for the fifth member of a hunting party
involved in a boating accident Saturday.
WHERE BOAT SWAMPED
VP Map
KEYWORDS: INJURY HUNTERS RESCUE DROWNINGS ACCIDENT BOAT
FATALITIES