Local News

The King County Sheriff’s Office has ended a search for a skydiver who has been missing since a jump from a helicopter near Mount Si on Thursday afternoon.

Over the past four days, 386 volunteers from 19 agencies have searched an area of about nine square miles for Kurt Ruppert of Lake City, Fla. The sheriff’s office helicopter also searched for three days from the air.

Ruppert jumped from 6,500 feet, wearing a wingsuit. Known as a “birdman suits” or “flying squirrel suits,” the suits have a webbed design featuring fabric or material between the legs and under the arms that increases a skydiver’s surface area, making the fall slower, and giving more horizontal glide.

Crews extensively searched a quarter-mile area that offered the most potential for finding him, given the helicopter’s flight path and information from Ruppert’s cell phone immediately after his jump.

Crews have completed searching areas that could be reached on foot, the sheriff’s office said. There are cliff areas that cannot be reached on foot because of the extreme risk they would pose to searchers, but the sheriff’s office said it will search those areas by helicopter when weather permits.

The Associated Press

The Associated Press

The Associated Press

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico — The Coast Guard has searched for a second day for an Olympia man missing from his Caribbean cruise but found no sign of him.

Coast Guard spokesman Ricardo Castrodad tells The Associated Press that two ships and a plane based in Florida were searching the ocean northwest of Puerto Rico on Friday. He said it remained an active search effort.

The 42-year-old man was identified as Jason Rappe of Olympia, who had been on board the Holland America Line cruise ship Eurodam. The ship was traveling from St. Thomas to the Bahamas when he was reported missing by his wife on Thursday. Rappe’s baseball cap was found on one of the decks and he is believed to have gone overboard.

“At this point, we are actively searching,” Castrodad told The Associated Press. “We are hoping to find a survivor.”

He said the Coast Guard had not decided how long it would search. He said such decisions are made on a case by case basis depending on such factors as the weather and the physical condition of the missing person.

The ship turned around to join the search, but Holland America spokeswoman Sally Andrews said the ship had since resumed its voyage. It was scheduled to return to Fort Lauderdale, Florida, on Saturday.

Briana Troyer, 16, was last seen with Terrence D. Powell, a level-one sex offender, leaving a Tacoma bowling alley yesterday afternoon. An Amber Alert has been issued to find her.

The Associated Press

UPDATE: 10 a.m. | TACOMA — A missing 16-year-old special education student and a 21-year-old sex offender were found asleep Wednesday morning at a north Tacoma home, police said.

The Associated Press

UPDATE: 11:55 a.m. | A missing mushroom picker has been found near Randle.

The Lewis County sheriff’s office says searchers found the 50-year-old Packwood man about 9:30 a.m. Thursday walking down a Forest Service road about five miles from where he was last seen Wednesday afternoon.
He was cold and wet but did not need medical attention.

He told searchers that he started a small fire to stay warm through the night.

The Associated Press

The diver from the state Department of Natural Resources who was lost while diving off Bainbridge Island has been identified as David D. Scheinost, 24, of Puyallup.

The search for Scheinost, who is presumed dead, resumed today and is being conducted by the Bainbridge Island Police Department and supported by the U.S. Coast Guard, U.S. Navy, Kitsap County Sheriff’s office and DNR law enforcement.

Scheinost was a geoduck compliance diver with the DNR’s Aquatic Resources Division, according to the DNR.  He was part of a DNR dive team sampling for paralytic shellfish poisoning (PSP) southwest of the Restoration Point geoduck tract when the incident occurred Tuesday, according to the DNR.

Scheinost, a 2010 graduate of the Divers Institute of Technology in Seattle, was hired by the state in February.

The Associated Press

Police are searching for a missing Mercer Island man after his boat, above, was found grounded in Kirkland Friday night. (Photo courtesy of King County Sheriff’s Office)

A Mercer Island man is missing after he went out on his boat to do some repairs, according to the King County Sheriff’s Office.

Richard Sweezey

Sheriff’s spokewoman Sgt. Cindi West said Richard Sweezey’s boat, a 1965 Chris Craft, Roamer, was found grounded in Kirkland on Friday night.  The investigation began at 7 p.m. after a resident in the 300 block of Lake Ave West called police to report the boat had drifted into the shoreline.

Police boarded it, found a portable generator running and a tool in the water but didn’t find Sweezey, 67.

Fearing that Sweezey had fallen into the water,  the King County Sheriff’s helicopter unit and deputies began a search with the assistance of the Coast Guard and Seattle Police Marine Patrol.

Deputies found Sweezey’s car at the Queen City Yacht Club in Portage Bay where he has a slip.

Early Saturday deputies talked to a friend of Sweezey’s at the yacht club who said he usually didn’t have life jackets on the boat but the friend had loaned him one

Deputies said a life jacket was still inside the boat.

Police searched the area between the slip and where the boat was found without success.

Deputies contacted Sweezey’s wife who had been out of town and had been trying to reach him.

Investigators ask or anyone who may have seen the boat on Lake Washington on Friday afternoon to call the King County Sheriff’s Office at 206- 296-3311.