Former resident drowns in Red River
The 33-year-old man who apparently drowned in the Red River in Grand Forks was a former Bemidji resident.
A search that began Monday with the report of a missing swimmer ended Wednesday afternoon when boat crews pulled the body of 33-year-old Jerry Lewis Boggs from the Red River.
Maj. Mike Fonder of the Grand Forks County Sheriff's Department said searchers found the body shortly after 3:30 p.m. in about 16 feet of water.
The body was taken by ambulance to Altru Hospital in Grand Forks for an autopsy. Authorities presume that Boggs drowned.
Fonder said Boggs, originally from the Bemidji area, had been staying at the Northlands Rescue Mission in Grand Forks and occasionally near the river.
Police received a report Monday that a man in his boxers was sitting on the Kennedy Bridge railing. Officers arrived but found no one on the bridge, which carries U.S. Highway 2 across the Red and links the Grand Cities.
They eventually discovered two intoxicated men on the Grand Forks bank who reported that they'd lost track of Boggs while swimming.
Boggs is survived by his mother, Nancy Boggs of Bemidji, and sisters, Sandy Boggs of Bemidji and Cindy Boggs of California.
