Police discovered and identified the body of University of Wisconsin-La Crosse junior Jared Dion at 7:50 a.m. Thursday morning. Police found the body in the Mississippi River near the Riverside Park levee. According to The La Crosse Tribune, an autopsy will be conducted in the case.
Dion, a 21-year-old Pewaukee native, was last seen in downtown La Crosse around 2:30 a.m. Saturday morning after leaving a bar with friends. Friends said after they boarded a safe bus back to the UW-L campus, they turned around to talk to Dion but he had vanished.
The La Crosse Sheriff’s Department, UW-L Police and local law enforcement combined efforts to search for Dion. The Wisconsin Advocates for Missing Persons, La Crosse Police Chaplains and city fire departments also joined the search.
Police Chief Edward Kondracki said “investigation into the circumstances surrounding Jared’s missing status had revealed no evidence of foul play” in a press release upon the body’s recovery from the river.
The city police department requested the state Department of Criminal Investigations (DCI) examine the case in search of leads for more information. The DCI met with La Crosse police and determined that the investigation had been completed with no evidence of foul play identified.
Kondracki also noted that six other men, aged 19 to 28-years-old, also drowned in the city’s portion of the Mississippi River since 1997. Kondracki said a common denominator in all of these cases was a high blood alcohol level, in the range of .20 to 0.42.
Kondracki noted one case in which an inebriated man who fell through the river’s icy surface survived. In this case, the man described his level of intoxication to be extremely high and noted how easy it was to “become disoriented and wander off the bank and onto the river,” the release stated.
The release addressed two other cases. In one situation, an angry mob pursued two brothers and forced them into the river, drowning one brother.
Another intoxicated man drowned in the river after falling through its thin ice in March 2001.
Kondracki said in the release that all investigated cases no evidence of foul play had been discovered.
UW-L Director of University Relations Cary Heyer said the university plans on organizing memorial services for the campus community, but will not organize any memorials prior to the funeral.
“It’s too early right now,” Heyer said. “We’re just trying to work with the family and campus community and some wrestling team members.”
Since Dion was discovered only early Thursday morning, Heyer said UW-L students have not fully reacted to the tragedy.
“Right now, there is a way of emotion on campus and letting the news settle in,” Heyer said. “We want to let people lean on each other, deal with [the tragedy] through each other.”
