Investigators search for dead Canadian diver’s missing scuba equipment

Stephen Long, the husband of a Mississauga woman who drowned in a diving accident in the St. Lawrence river, has appealed for other divers to help in the search for his wife’s missing scuba equipment.

Four days after 49-year-old Luciana Perri died while diving to the wreck of the freighter Henry C. Daryaw in Brockville Narrows, it remains a mystery how the experienced diver with no known medical issues got into trouble.

Leeds County OPP officers investigating the death have been searching for the scuba gear she was wearing at the time, which was dropped into the river during the frantic rescue effort. OPP water units have so far drawn a blank.

Mr. Long, who was diving with his wife at the time, has now called for other divers in the area to look for the missing equipment.

In a notice posted on the Ontario Underwater Council’s website, president Rick Le Blanc wrote, “Mr. Long is pleading divers and the general public to search for the equipment. It may be floating or could have sunk.”

Perri was using a buoyancy-control jacket, an oxygen tank and a breathing tube at the time she died.

An autopsy on Thursday revealed Perri likely drowned but gave few clues as to how that happened.

Perri was in about 27 metres (90 feet) of water when she got into distress. An experienced deepwater diver, she was on her second dive of the day with her husband and another couple.

The dive to the wreck, which is about five kilometres west of Brockville, is considered to be an advanced dive. Ronald Brow, 58, from York, died doing the same dive last June.

Source: www.ourwindsor.ca