LITTLE ROCK — Three Pulaski County sheriff ’s deputies traded in their uniforms for scuba gear Thursday when they went diving in the Arkansas River to retrieve stolen vehicles.
“We’re fishing for cars today,” said Lt. Tim Hibbs of the Pulaski County sheriff’s office.
The diving excursion was aimed at solving some stolen-car cases, clearing out the river and also training a deputy in diving protocol.
Several officers gathered Thursday just east of the Riverside RV Park in downtown North Little Rock at a place that Hibbs said car thieves are known to frequent.
“This is a pretty hot spot for submerged vehicles,” he said.
Matt Flowers, a corporal with the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission, laid out a scenario:
“People steal ’em, strip ’em and drive ’em off into here,” he said, gesturing toward the sheer cement drop-off into the river.
A mud-encrusted 2000 Chevrolet Impala, which Hibbs said was reported as stolen to the North Little Rock police last year, was the first of two vehicles deputies retrieved.
Hibbs said when it got pulled out, a lifelike doll fell out of the car. “It was creepy,” he said.
In the retrieval process, divers on a patrol boat first tied a buoy to the submerged vehicle to mark it. Then they hooked the vehicle to cables connected to a tow truck that pulled it out.
But extracting the second vehicle, a 1995 GMC pickup, was not as easy as getting the Impala.
The deputies had a hard time finding a sturdy spot to hook the cables for fear the fragile truck would fall apart as theyraised it out of the water. After about two hours, they got the pickup - which still sported its turquoise paint - out in two pieces.
Deputies were puzzled once they identified the pickup - it was from Dallas and has not been reported stolen, Hibbs said.
“We have no idea what it was doing in our river,” he said.
Hibbs said the car and the pickup will be impounded and most likely be turned into scrap metal.
He said deputies are continuing the search for a Toyota Yaris that ran off Interstate 430 and into the river Sunday when a woman lost control of it as she reached for her cell phone. The woman was saved by a man who witnessed the accident, but the car is still missing.
“We just have to continue to search until we find it,” Hibbs said.
Arkansas, Pages 11 on 07/23/2010