Two people are dead after a jet ski accident in the South River in Edgewater, Maryland, marking six deaths on Anne Arundel County waters in less than a week.
The crash happened on a stretch of river between Riva and Solomons Island Roads.
Anne Arundel County Fire officials said the two people, an adult man and woman, had left a home along Edgewater Drive around 1:30 a.m. About an hour later, a 911 call was made because the two hadn’t returned.
The caller “indicated that they thought they heard the sound of a collision around 1:45 a.m., but didn’t notify us until they failed to return,” said Captain Russ Davies, a spokesman for Anne Arundel County Fire.
A former spokeswoman for Natural Resources Police notes it’s illegal to ride a jet ski between sunset and sunrise.
The fire department’s dive team was joined by Maryland Natural Resources Police, the Coast Guard and Maryland State Police in the search for the two people. They “found evidence where a jet ski had struck a marker in the South River. Further investigation, we did find a partially submerged jet ski” said Davies.
The marker, only a few hundred feet from the home where the couple left, is also around where the man’s body was found. It’s estimated that the river depth there is about 17 feet. The jet ski and the woman were both found about a 1,000 yards further upstream, in water believed to be about 14-feet deep.
Adult man and woman pulled from South River this morning makes six deaths on the water in less than a week. Belief is jet skiers hit this marker around 1:45a. More this morning @WTOP pic.twitter.com/6CsmvboXOi
— John Domen (@JDDsays) July 3, 2019
A neighbor told WTOP that the couple lived in Virginia but owned a second home along the river, and that they had just bought the jet ski a few days ago. Neither of them appeared to be wearing life jackets on the water.
Seven people have died just in Anne Arundel County waters in the last month — six since this past Saturday night — a number fire officials say is more than they can recall dying on the water in any year in recent memory.
Four of those people died in water-related incidents over the weekend, including a man who drowned in Edgewater Sunday morning and a secret service agent who drowned after her kayak flipped in the Severn River Saturday.
Below is a map of the area.
