Pacemaker Fishing Forum

When we were there, there were high winds and Small Craft Advisories. We (the crew) did not want to take a chance on the weather.....safety 1st....fishing 2nd! I think we made the right choice!

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The Virginian-Pilot
© January 14, 2009

VIRGINIA BEACH

Virginia Beach police have identified two people from Arizona who died Wednesday morning when their boat capsized near the Lesner Bridge.

Officer Adam Bernstein said Ned Rokey, 89, and Allen Dedrick, 69, were the two men who were killed.

Four other men survived after rescuers pulled them from the water, officials said.

At the time of the rescue, Rokey was dead, one man was in cardiac arrest and two men were in stable condition, said Brigade Chief Dennis Hodge of the Virginia Beach Department of Emergency Medical Services.

Bernstein confirmed shortly after 1 p.m. that a second person dumped into the frigid water when the 18-foot boat capsized had died. The four others were suffering from hypothermia at the time they were rescued by the Coast Guard, police, firefighters and the Virginia Pilot Association, authorities said. Dedrick, the boat owner, was the second man who died.

The rescued boaters were taken to a nearby hospital.

Police have not yet released the names of the boaters involved in the accident.

The boat overturned about 8:57 a.m., Bernstein said. A call was heard by a nearby marina, said Chief Bruce Nedelka with Beach EMS.

The Coast Guard received the distress signal and had trouble, at first, locating the boat, Hodge said. An MH-60 helicopter from Elizabeth City, N.C., and a 25-foot rescue boat from Little Creek were sent to the scene, said Petty Officer, Kip Wadlow, a Coast Guard spokesman. The Coast Guard was sending investigators to the scene, Wadlow said.

Firefighters and police also had rescue boats on the scene. Two were rescued by a Virginia Pilot Association boat, two were rescued by the Coast Guard and others were rescued by police and firefighters, Nedelka said.

The National Weather Service issued a small craft advisory at 10:07 a.m. that was in effect until 1 p.m. The water temperature this morning was 46 at the Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel, according to the National Weather Service.

Billy Burket, a Virginia Beach fire captain, was off duty and driving over the Lesner Bridge this morning when he got a call from the Pilot Association tower telling him about the six people in the water, he said.

Burket said he trained the launch crews for the Virginia and Maryland Pilot Association.

Burket got on a boat himself with a crew of two – by the time his boat arrived at the scene the Maryland Pilot Association boat had two on board and a Beach police boat had one on board, he said. Burket jumped on the Maryland boat to help the patients as the boat took them to shore.

One patient was in cardiac arrest and one was hypothermic, he said. At the shore, they were taken to a hospital by ambulance. “I just happened to be in the right place at the right time,” he said.

Both Burket and Hodge said they wanted to thank the Pilot Association for a tremendous response.