Tourist’s body recovered from Pa. river

Rescue vessels are seen on the Delaware River in Philadelphia, Wednesday, July 7, 2010. Coast Guard officials say a barge collided with a tourist duck boat on the Delaware River in Philadelphia. (AP Photo/ Joseph Kaczmarek)

Story Topics

• Disaster_Accident
• Crystal Kneen
• Philadelphia Fire Department

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PHILADELPHIA (AP) — The body of one of two missing Hungarians was recovered Friday from the Delaware River near where a 250-foot barge collided with a stalled amphibious sightseeing boat, throwing 37 people into the water.

A statement from Hungary’s foreign ministry said U.S. authorities had informed its consul that they had recovered the body of a female Hungarian citizen missing since Wednesday’s accident.

Sixteen-year-old Dora Schwendtner was one of two people who disappeared after the collision. The other, 20-year-old Szabolcs Prem, has not been found.

The girl’s body was recovered at around 4:45 a.m. near the Walt Whitman Bridge by members of the Philadelphia Fire Department, said Coast Guard Petty Officer Crystal Kneen. The bridge is down the river from the site of the collision.

As divers began preparations to haul the sunken boat from the water Friday morning, television cameras captured the image of a body floating face-down near the salvage site. The body surfaced briefly before submerging again.

Police did not immediately comment on whether it could be the body of the missing 20-year-old.

The Coast Guard had said Thursday evening they did not believe either of the missing passengers had survived.

The Georgia company that owns the duck boats operation said Thursday it had followed safety recommendations following a 1999 sinking, but it suspended its operations nationwide.

The missing were among 13 Hungarian students, two Hungarian teachers, four U.S. students and three U.S. teachers on a tour hosted by Marshallton United Methodist Church in suburban Philadelphia.

Istvan Nagy, a deputy mayor in Hungary, told state news agency MTI that authorities were helping the families of those involved in the accident, including the quick processing of passport requests so parents could travel as soon as possible to see their children.

Salvage crews began preparing to raise the sunken boat shortly before 9 a.m. Friday, Philadelphia police Lt. Andrew Napoli said.

Crews working from a barge planned to lower chains down to the sunken duck boat, run them under its hull and lift it up like a sling. The fact that the boat is resting on a gravel bottom should make the process easier than if it was silt, Lt. Napoli said.

Tina Rosebrook, 30, of Davidson, N.C., told the Associated Press that she was briefly under the bow of the barge. She’d had time to get lifejackets on her 10-year-old daughter and 12-year-old niece but not herself. When she surfaced, she found one floating on the river — and discovered the girls were safe.

Police rescue boats arrived and helped them out of the water almost as quickly as they’d been submerged.

On Thursday, National Transportation Safety Board Investigators dug into their efforts to reconstruct what went wrong. They expected to spend more than a week working in Philadelphia before heading back to Washington, D.C., and continuing their investigation.

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