Published: April 20, 2009 10:42 pm      

Right creek, wrong car

Search for wrecked vehicle results in odd discovery

A Department of Public Safety trooper and a whole team of tow-truck workers, as well as a private diver from Dallas, worked most of the afternoon to haul a car from Richland Creek, but it wasn’t the one they were seeking.

A wreck over the weekend sent a car into the creek just south of Angus in a non-fatal accident, but when the retrieval operation for the vehicle began Monday, the diver didn’t find the car they were seeking, he found something else — a 1996 Ford Bronco, according to Sgt. Ken Authier of the Texas Department of Public Safety.

“It’s not unusual to find stuff we weren’t trying to find,” Authier said Monday afternoon.

The company doing the heavy hauling, A-1 Tire and Towing, had three trucks and four men at the scene. The operation also used a contract diver, whose job it was to hook the chain onto the car beneath the brown swirling waters of a creek swollen by weekend rains.

“We brought one up,” said Brian Gilmore, the manager for A-1. “We went for one and found another.”

The owner of the Bronco was from Ennis, but it may no longer be a good address, Authier said. It’s unclear how long the truck has been underwater, or where it went into the creek. The license plates on the car expired 12 years ago, in 1997.

“Right now, we don’t have an answer,” he said.

—————

Click here to e-mail Janet Jacobs.

Click here to Soundoff on this story.