A father dives into icy water to save his daughter. Neither resurfaces.
By wire services
Published November 26, 2005
CEDAR GROVE, Wis. - An ice-skating trip at a small pond ended tragically Friday when a young girl fell through the ice and her father plunged in trying to save her. Authorities searching with divers and boats recovered their bodies.
Authorities identified the victims as Brian Obbink, 44, and his daughter Megan, 10.
Obbink - whom community members call a pillar of the Cedar Grove-area community - was skating on the football-field-sized pond Friday morning with Megan and her 6-year-old sister, whose name was not released, when the older girl fell through the ice about 11:30 a.m., Sheboygan County Sheriff's Sgt. Doug Tuttle said.
Obbink, a father of four who lived just outside Cedar Grove, dove into the water trying to rescue his daughter, but neither resurfaced, officials said.
The 6-year-old ran about a quarter-mile across a plowed field to a cousin's home, and people at that residence called 911, Sheboygan County Sheriff Michael Helmke said.
Rescuers chopped through the ice and searched the pond by boat Friday afternoon, when snow was falling and the temperature was 22 degrees. The Sheboygan County Law Enforcement Dive Team found the bodies, officials said.
"The rescue (attempt) was difficult; the water was zero visibility. The bodies were found on the bottom of the pond, in relatively thick mud," Helmke said in an interview with WTMJ-TV.
The pond in Cedar Grove is about 8 to 10 feet deep and the ice was less than 3 inches thick, officials said. Cedar Grove is about 40 miles north of Milwaukee, in Sheboygan County.
Bill Schreiber lives about 200 yards from the pond. Schreiber said when he returned home from work about 11:40 a.m. he saw two people running toward the pond.
"I thought it was a dog accident because I've never seen people on the pond, only guys training their hunting dogs out there," he said. "But I've never heard of anyone skating there before."
Jordan Peterson, 16, who said he attends school with one of Obbink's older daughters, gathered near the pond with a group of stunned high-schoolers.
"I couldn't believe it," the teenager said. "They're a good family, good Christian family. They seemed like they had everything."
Scott Hildebrand, 46, of Cedar Grove said he knew the family.
"I was hoping they would be alive, but you know, as the minutes and hours ticked by (I knew) they weren't going to make it," Hildebrand said.
--Information from the Associated Press, the Sheboygan (Wis.) Press, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and WTMJ-TV was used in this report.
