RED WING, Minn. – Three people — two men and a teen-age girl — disappeared while swimming off Diamond Island, where the Vermillion and Cannon rivers flow gently into the Mississippi River. A fourth swimmer who was in trouble, a woman, was rescued by her father. But he then was pulled under when he went back and tried to rescue the other three. Goodhue County sheriff’s officer Mike Johnson said this happened at an underwater drop-off. The swimmers. he said, were inexperienced, not wearing life jackets, and probably unaware of an underwater drop-off from three-foot shallows to eight feet. The names of the victims were not available immediately, but Johnson understood they were from the same household in the St. Paul west suburb of Oakdale. For some reason thevgroup waited about 10 or 15 minutes before calling police, Johnsin said. There was some mystery how the group had arrived at the island. They appeared not to have a boat, Johnson said. Diamond Island technicaly is on the Wiscosinside of the Mississippi River. The search was being conducted by teams from Goodhue County in Minnesota and Pierce County in Wisconsin.
NOTE: This item corrects information in an initial report.
Diamond Island
Diamond Island is in sloughs west of the main navigation channel of the Mississippi River. It’s on the Wisconsin side of the Minnesota-Wisconsin border. There is no bridge. Several marinas on the Mississippi have boat rentals. The island is 2-1/2 miles upstream from Red Wing and 2-1/2 miles downstream from the Treasure Island casino and the Prairie Island nuclear power plant.