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WELLSVILLE – An elderly East Liverpool man who went missing seven years ago is presumed dead after his vehicle was recovered from a local waterway on Wednesday.
Divers had responded to the city’s Broadway wharf last week to help Adventures With Purposes (AWP) search for Charles “Mandrel” Fluharty around the seventh anniversary of his disappearance. With AWP scheduled to move on to their next case in Pittsburgh on their road trip, two other divers from Chaos Divers decided to stay put and continue to search for the missing man.
Divers Jacob Grubbs and Eric Bussick recovered a black Chevy Beretta with Fluharty’s license plate in the Yellow Creek area about 10 miles from the Broadway wharf along the Ohio River. After the submerged car was towed to shore by First Class Towing, a body was found in the driver’s seat who was also amputated as Fluharty, according to East Liverpool Police Detective Captain Darin Morgan.
Morgan was there, as was Greg Smith, who had originally been in charge of the East Liverpool deal in 2014.
Now a St. Clair Township detective, Smith was first briefed on AWP and Chaos diving efforts to clean up the environment by removing vehicles from waterways and resolving cold cases. He contacted them about the Fluharty affair.
Chaos Divers’ Eric Bussick (left) and Jacob Grubbs frame their coordinator Lindsay Bussick and hold up a license plate removed from a vehicle found in Jefferson County on Wednesday. The initial missing person report by Chad Tatgenhorst, then East Liverpool patroller, said a Columbiana County woman reported her brother, Charles Fluharty, missing in October 2014 with her Chevrolet Beretta. Divers found the vehicle submerged in the mouth of Yellow Creek near the Ohio River, with a license plate stating 755XEL. Police will positively identify the driver when the results are obtained from DNA taken from a body found in the driver’s seat of the submerged car. (Photo submitted / Chaos Divers)
On October 19, 2014, Fluharty’s sister Donna Stemple reported her brother in a wheelchair missing after making alarming comments to a caregiver. Police attended Fluharty’s apartment in Riverview Towers and discovered that he and his Chevrolet Beretta were missing. The license plate number of the 755XEL car was noted in the report.
Fast forward to October 6, 2021, when divers battled zebra mussels to remove the license plate from a submerged Chevrolet Beretta found at the mouth of Yellow Creek in the Ohio River after sonar struck it. quickly detected.
As Grubbs explained Thursday night in a phone interview from elsewhere in Ohio, as he packed his gear to get to the next Chaos stop three hours away in Tennessee, the zebra mussels are sharp and cause cuts when divers feel underwater.
“They are an invasive species and feed on algae and cover paint and car, underwater”, he explained.
Chaos Divers joined their AWP colleagues live to recap the Fluharty mission for their followers, including explaining how it took First Class Towing about five to six hours to pull it out of the water as they battled the silt. .
Saline Township EMS has removed the body and taken it to the Jefferson County Mortuary, where they are confident Fluharty’s family will secure the closure.
According to Morgan, he forwarded a DNA sample for a relative in Jefferson County, so that it could be sent to confirm the identity by the State Bureau of Criminal Investigations. No criminal act appears to be suspected.
Dive teams like ADP from Oregon and Chaos from Illinois are part of a new movement committed to not only solving these cold cases, but also eliminating potential environmental hazards, like vehicle corrosion in waterways. .
In 2014 alone, the Houston Chronicle focused on a team from Texas who claimed to have evidence of more than 127 cars submerged in that city’s bayous, some of which may contain the bodies of missing people. In this article, the nonprofit search and rescue organization alleged that it was told to keep quiet about it because the city did not have the funds and resources to deal with the sunk vehicles.
So it’s not an isolated problem in the Ohio Valley, where AWP and Chaos found nine vehicles and a boat while working here in areas between the Jennings-Randolph Bridge, Broadway Wharf, and the mouth of the Yellow. Creek.
The two area detectives were apparently impressed with the efforts of the dive crews, much of which is chronicled about their social media presences and commitments to assist law enforcement as many people are reluctant to go. ‘to imply.
They concluded by expressing gratitude to all agencies involved, including the Calcutta Volunteer Fire Department and the Hancock County Sheriff, which they initially believed was within the competence. No one refused to lend a hand, Smith said.
Grubbs said the Chaos Divers are not yet finished here and hope to be back by pulling these vehicles from the waterways of the East Liverpool area. “
We want to help this movement, ”he said before noting that 13 people were recovered on Thursday.
Contrary to popular belief, divers are not there to demonstrate, but to help and clean up the environment and assist law enforcement in their efforts. Grubbs concluded that law enforcement officials now have their contact information to call them if they need help again.
For more information on Chaos Divers, who are 100% donation dependent, visit www.chaosdivers.com.
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