Authorities Tuesday called off a search for 24-year-old Edmonds man who went missing during a boating excursion Saturday evening along the Columbia River north of Wenatchee.
Friends reported Steven Frausto missing at 6:35 p.m. after three boats that had been tied together drifted about 50 feet off the shore, said Douglas County Sheriff’s Office undersherrif Don Culp.
Deputies searched for him until 11:30 p.m. Saturday and again on Sunday and Monday.
“Guys will continue to keep an eye out, but you finally reach a point on the Columbia River where you end up just floating back and forth,” Culp said Tuesday.
Frausto was with a group of about 10 boaters who left the Bauer’s Landing area off of Highway 97, about two miles south of the Beebe Bridge for boating and wake boarding. They noticed him missing after traveling north toward Chelan Falls.
Culp said Monday that Frausto had been drinking and wasn’t feeling well, so he slept at the boat’s stern. He later walked to the front of the boat.
Frausto, a 2003 graduate of Kamiak High School and 2005 Central Washington University graduate, grew up in north Edmonds, near Mukilteo.
Culp said there were few calm stretches of river along the route boaters traveled.
“We have to believe at this point that he probably did just go in the river…” he said.
This is the first time in Culp’s nearly 30 years with the department where a witness didn’t see someone fall in the river.
He said the search area was too broad to be effective and pervasive milfoil made search efforts more difficult.
—From www.heraldnet.com
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