Two children believed to be siblings were found dead in an Arkansas lake in an apparent boating accident on Wednesday, according to officials.
Police received a call on Wednesday evening from a local fisherman on Lake Ouachita that he’d found two bodies wearing lifejackets, later identified as a five-year-old girl and 10-year-old boy thought to be related.
Now officials from the Garland County sheriff’s office and Arkansas Game and Fish Commission are scouring the 40,000 acre lake looking for a third lost boater, believed to be the children’s father.
Officials have deployed search boats as well as a dive team to locate the missing man.
Police have recovered the 14-foot, flat-bottomed boat the group was using, after it washed up near the Yorktown Bay area of the lake, which sits about 50 miles west of the state capital, Little Rock.
Keith Stephens, a spokesperson for the AGFC, said such incidents are thankfully uncommon on the lake, the state’s largest, and that only person had drowned in the state this year so far before the apparent accident this week.
“It’s a big lake and a small boat. It’s still very cold out here, the water’s very cold,” he told KARK. “You just have to take precautions.”
