News

Mar 27, 2023

Search teams hope to bring Carlos Lopez

Editor’s note: This article has been updated to correct the last name of Carlos

Editor's note: This article has been updated to correct the last name of Carlos E. Lopez-Torres, as provided by the Massachusetts State Police. His body was recovered Tuesday.

About 10 different law enforcement departments converged on Brunelle's Marina in South Hadley on Tuesday morning, hoping that after three days, officials can finally bring a Springfield family closure.

Carlos E. Lopez-Torres, 51, of Springfield, has been missing since he collided with a boat while riding a jet ski on the Connecticut River on Sunday.

Police responded around 7 p.m. on Sunday to a call that a man on a jet ski and a boat had hit each other in the Northampton section of the river. A Chicopee man and an Agawam woman on the boat were brought to Baystate Medical Center with serious but non-life threatening injuries, police said.

Police searched for Lopez-Torres, the jet-ski driver, until just before midnight on Sunday and began again on Monday using side-scan sonar look below the water's surface, Massachusetts State Police said.

On Tuesday morning around 9, several local and state agencies and departments were at Brunelle's Marina to continue the search for Lopez with dive teams and boats — but said his body might have moved in the river because of its flow.

Eight boats and 16 divers from various departments moved their efforts to part of the river in South Hadley Tuesday, a spokesperson for Hampden County Sheriff's Office said. The team planned a coordinated grid plan for boats and divers to canvass sections of the river Tuesday, said South Hadley Fire Chief Robert Authier.

"[We’re] using a mapping system that the state rangers have ... they can track it so they know what areas [we’ve] actually covered," Authier said.

The officials hope to search a couple square miles on the river Tuesday, said Lt. Dan Popovich, head of the state police Dive Unit.

"[We’re going to do] some towbar searches; we put two divers on a 6-foot bar, and we pull them underwater behind the boat," said Popovich. "We can cover more ground that way, and we do search patterns, kind of like mowing the lawn."

Popovich added Environmental Police were working with state police on side scan sonar operations and were attempting to locate "targets," or evidence related to the incident, in the water that divers would later look at more closely.

Authier said the Connecticut River can be very deep, with some parts at 100 feet, while others at just 10 feet. Though where the crash happened is only in about 10 to 15 feet of water, according to Popovich, the river could complicate things.

"The problem is the flow in the river could move the body. So each day, we’re kind of starting over with areas that we’ve already covered. We’re pretty much covering what we did yesterday and the day before, and adding on to it," said Popovich.

To get Lopez-Torres’ family "closure here today would be nice," said Authier.

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