OGDEN — A Washington Terrace man who police say found the body of a boy in the Weber River on Sunday afternoon says he felt compelled to keep looking until the child was found.
Jack Price, 53, said he went to the place where 4-year-old Corbin Anderson, of Layton, fell into the water every day for the two weeks since the boy was believed to have drowned.
Price said he’s not particularly religious nor a member of any faith group, but he said prayer is what led him to find Corbin’s body.
“Something kept telling me to keep coming down here,” he said. “I knew he was down here. I didn’t want to quit until he was found.”
Price said he has a 6-year-old son of his own, whom he even brought with him to the river Saturday to look for the boy.
“I just wanted to give the family closure,” Price said.
Because Sunday was Mother’s Day and Price’s mother had died two years ago, he decided the best way to honor her was to spend the day in the service of Corbin’s mother’s heart.
“I can’t imagine what they’ve got to be going through,” he said of Corbin’s family. “I kept feeling his presence. I kept praying.”
Price said he found the boy about a quarter-mile downstream from where he fell in.
He said Corbin’s body was under a log where some other debris had gathered.
Price was hiking through a brushy area off the beaten path when he spotted what he thought was the back of Corbin’s head and the top of one arm a few inches under the water.
He said he had to walk away at first but then returned to reach down and take Corbin’s hand out of the water.
“It broke my heart,” he said.
That’s when he called police.
Ogden Police Lt. Scott Conley said police were called to the scene around 1:40 p.m. Sunday.
He said detectives and a medical examiner on the scene both gave a positive identification of the body, which was transported to the state medical examiner’s office.
Conley said the state medical examiner will have to give final identification, but he did not doubt the body was Corbin’s.
He said officials talked with Corbin’s father, whose description of what Corbin was wearing at the time he fell into the river matched what the found boy was wearing.
“It was kind of a bittersweet solution,” Conley said. “On Mother’s Day, we find him in the river.”
But Conley said notifying the family on that day while they were surrounded by other family members at a Mother’s Day gathering gave them a chance for some support.
Conley said there’s no way of estimating the hundreds of man hours that have been put into finding Corbin in the river, as hundreds of volunteers have helped in one way or another in looking for the boy.
There was a false alarm Wednesday when a man in a float tube thought he had found the boy.
On Thursday, Ogden detectives observed Make a Difference Day by picking up trash along the river while looking for the boy at the same time.
Conley said low water levels in the river assisted in the search. He said much water has been held back, likely in anticipation of upcoming irrigation needs.
Corbin was posing for photos with his family when he fell into the cold water of the Weber River near the Ogden Kayak Park.
Search and rescue crews searched both above ground and below the water’s surface for the boy’s body, even diverting the river, without success.
The family held a memorial service for the boy Saturday in Layton.
“Faith makes all things possible,” reads a rock that is part of a makeshift memorial at a lookout point across the river from where Corbin fell into the river. A candlelight vigil was held late Sunday evening where Corbin's body was found.
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