Ambulances line Ceres Hill Road as responders work to rescue a child in the river
Updated at 8:45 p.m.
By Sharyn L. Decker
Lewis County Sirens news reporter
CHEHALIS – An eight-year-old boy missing from his home along the Chehalis River this afternoon drowned.
The child’s mother reported him missing just after 4:30 p.m. from the 100 block of Ceres Hill Road, just west of Adna, according to Lewis County Sheriff’s Office Chief Civil Deputy Stacy Brown.
Deputies trained in swift water rescue found the boy about a quarter mile down stream about an hour later, Brown said.
A deputy saw him on a gravel bar in the middle of the river and swam across to begin CPR, Brown said.
Responders continued CPR as the child was transported to Providence Centralia Hospital, but he was pronounced dead about 7:05 p.m., according to Brown.
Members of Lewis County Fire Districts 13 and 6, as well as AMR assisted in the rescue.
They believe he fell in the river, according to Brown. His name has not been released.
Neighbors Bruce and Starla Terry said the boy lived with his mother and sister.
He didn’t talk much, Bruce Terry said.
“That little boy, he would devil you with his smiles though, tease you,” Bruce Terry said.
The homes sit within feet of the high bank of the river, a dangerously unstable bank, according to the Terrys.
His mother had a fence around the back door, but Bruce Terry speculated somehow the child went close to river, just to look and ended up in the water.
“You might think that grass out there has dirt under it,” Starla Terry said as she pointed to edge of her back lawn. “But it might not.”
The spot, at the north end of the Boistfort Valley, is just a a few miles east of where a 24-year-old Olympia man drowned last month. Daniel Kuhn took part in the Pe Ell River run and his body was found four days later.
The banks of the Chehalis River are eroded behind Bruce and Starla Terry's house, next door to the child's family home.
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