Prayers

Please remember former West Forsyth and UNCC pitcher Erik Walker in your prayers. He was rafting yesterday and the boat went under. The other person came up unharmed, but Erik was not found. They are still searching.

 

Thanks teach. It's not looking good.

Link: http://www.thisboardrocks.com/forum/showthread.php?p=1692234#post1692234

 

What a tragedy. I havea co-worker that is a family member. A terrible loss!! Let's all keep them in our prayers!!

 

My thoughts and prayers go out to the families invoved. I am also sending out a special prayer to Coach Pope, as well. I hope he can share a story about this obviously talented young man.

 

Erik

Our thoughts and prayers are with Erik's family. Really don't know what else to say at this time.

 

prayers

 

Video link: Search continues, Angela Pellerano, WXII

Video link: Who is Erik Walker? Damany Lewis, WXII

 

What do we have to do to play those video links?

 

WXII Channel 12 Web-site

Another way to get to these links is to go to http://www.wxii12.com/index.html (WXII Channel 12) website and click on the any link. From there the other links will display.

 

Elements slow search
Family's vigil, volunteers' efforts will continue
By Monte Mitchell, Winston-Salem Journal Reporter

INDEPENDENCE, Va. Searchers have dived, boated and flown over the New River in the daylight hours since Saturday afternoon looking for Erik Walker, 23 a Clemmons man missing after he lost his grip on an overturned canoe.

The search will begin again at daybreak today.

Family members and friends looked on grimly yesterday, walking down a wooded path past yellow police tape to an area where divers were searching the rough bottom of the swift waters.

It was cold, with snow flurries when the search began again about 7 a.m. yesterday. A boat took a scent dog out onto the water before any divers got in the river. The dog is capable of detecting human scent through the water.

A Virginia State Police helicopter arrived at 11:20 a.m., sweeping up and down the river looking for spots of interest for the boat searchers. The winds were buffeting the helicopter so badly, however, that it had to land after less than an hour.

Boats were doing grid searches of a half-mile stretch of the river below where Walker and a friend overturned.

"We're looking for areas of interest and something that might need a diver," said Lt. Rex Hill, a game warden with the Virginia Department of Game and Inland Fisheries. "We're constantly doing diving."

After their canoe overturned about 12:30 p.m. Saturday in rapids, Walker and his friend held onto the canoe and waded with it through shoals. When they went into deeper water, she was able to hold on to the canoe, but he lost his grip.

Hill said that the nature of the river makes it much harder to search here than on a smooth-bottomed lake. The river is wide and the water is cold and fast, about 45 degrees and moving at about 7 mph. The river bottom is a three-dimensional obstacle course, with sheer drop-offs, boulders, trees and other objects. "That's what makes it so difficult," Hill said. "You could be diving in 12 feet of water and go upstream or downstream and it be a foot of water."

Game Warden Wes Billings was one of 10 or so divers rotating in and out of the river.

"What we're trying to do is set a line so we can get down in those swift channels," Billings said. He was diving in areas that were about 9 feet deep, holding on to a line and kicking his fins to move side to side.

Billings, who wore a dry suit to insulate himself from the cold water, said that the dives were taxing, like running a three-mile race.

The air temperature rose to the low 40 degrees as the sun rose overhead, but the wind blowing off the water chilled the rescue workers, who were bundled in heavy coats and caps. One rescue worker's hands were chapped and trembling as he held a written statement from Walker's family. Members of the Woods River Chapter of the American Red Cross served chili and coffee.

Walker's friends and family huddled under blankets on the steps of a home. They didn't want to be interviewed, but they issued a statement, written by hand on lined paper.

"First and foremost, Erik's family wishes to thank all the many volunteers and rescue squads for their efforts in the recovery," they wrote. "Also the outpouring of love and support from the local families in the Cox Chapel community during this difficult time has been a true blessing. We appreciate all the thoughts and prayers over the past few days."

The search was on a remote area of the river. To reach it, searchers traveled more than a mile down a dirt road, then about a mile down a private dirt drive that runs beside the river and leads to vacation homes.

Walker and his friend put the canoe into the river at a public boat landing in the Cox Chapel area. It's in Grayson County, southwest of Independence and a couple of miles from the North Carolina-Virginia state line, above Alleghany County.

Game Warden Jason Harris, who was leading the search, said that 95 percent of the searchers were volunteers. Nearly 200 searchers were there Sunday, and about 100 worked yesterday.

The volunteers started pulling boats out of the water shortly after 4 p.m. yesterday, because it's too dangerous to search at night. Dark comes early in the shadows of the steep mountains that rise up from the river.

The search will continue today but start scaling back, Hill said, although he noted that many of the volunteers are ready to come back on short notice. The rapids are too rough for boats and divers where the river reaches the incident-command headquarters set up on the riverbank about a half-mile downstream from where Walker went under.

Walker was a star pitcher for West Forsyth High School, leading the school to the Class 4-A state-championship series his senior year in 2002. He was a standout closer for the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, where he set a school record for saves.

He had started his professional baseball career about four months ago. The Tampa Bay Devil Rays drafted Walker in the 20th round of the Major League Baseball draft last summer.