FRYEBURG — One police officer was released from the hospital Monday and one remains in critical condition after a boat crash Saturday on the Saco River, Fryeburg Police Chief Joshua Potvin said.
Officers Nathan Desjardins, 20, and Dale Stout, 51, were responding to a report of a flipped canoe on the river when their boat crashed, the chief said.
Desjardins is in critical condition at Central Maine Medical Center in Lewiston, and Stout was released Monday.
“Nate and his family continue to be in our thoughts and prayers,” Potvin said.
Canoeist Jennifer Bousquet, 38, of South Berwick is still missing, officials said.
“I just wish she’d come home and I know it’s not going to happen,” Audrey Sekenski, Bousquet’s mother, told WGME. “Even if they find her, at least I’ll have her here with me. I don’t want her down in the water. She was afraid and I wouldn’t want that for her.”
Bousquet was in a canoe with Wayne Demers, 62, of Somersworth, New Hampshire, and her boyfriend Bryan Day, 54, of South Berwick, when it flipped. Demers and Day made it to shore safely.
“She was so excited. It was her first trip to the Saco River,” Sekenski said. “But she did have a little fear of water.”
According to WGME, game wardens said during their trip the two canoes the three were on tipped over sending them into swift waters below.
“Bryan got stuck in the logs and everything and Jen just kept going down the water with the canoe,” Sekenski said. “He couldn’t see it anymore and then she was gone.”
“That was not like Jen,” Sekenski said. “I knew where they were going and I had this gut feeling because we’re so close and then the police officers came that night.”
The Warden Service is continuing their search for Bousquet.
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