Saturday dawned with news of another tragedy on the Seneca River.
The Onondaga County Sheriff’s Office reported that a man went missing early Saturday, July 11, near Lions Park in the town of Van Buren in the river.
In a release, Det. Jon Seeber said a resident living off Seneca Avenue in Van Buren was awoken around 5 a.m. by a male screaming for help.
The resident looked out his window and noticed a man in distress in the river; he immediately called 911, then ran to the shoreline and threw the man a flotation device.
The man in the water, however, continued downstream. He was last seen by rescuers in the 7700 block of Seneca Beach Drive.
Around 9:12 a.m. Monday, July 13, members of the Seneca River Fire Department’s Water Rescue Unit recovered a body later identified as 36-year-old Joshua Koegel of Baldwinsville from the river near the Onondaga County Sewage Treatment Plant off Barbara Lane in the town of Lysander.
The sheriff’s department declined to comment on the exact cause of death, pending an autopsy by the Onondaga County medical examiner. It was unclear why Koegel was in the river or where he went into the water.
Several agencies assisted the sheriff’s department in the rescue and recovery efforts, including the Baldwinsville, Seneca River, Liverpool, South Bay, Lakeside and Tully fire departments, Onondaga County Navigation Team, Onondaga County Emergency Management, Greater Baldwinsville Ambulance Corps and Air-1 Helicopter.
Koegel isn’t the first to lose his life on the Seneca this summer. Robert Mead, 27, of Syracuse, and his brother Joseph Mead, 25, of Liverpool, were fishing in kayaks on the river on the west side of the bridge around 11 a.m. June 13 when the kayaks got caught in the river’s strong current and capsized. Their bodies were found June 16.
