Corey Lilly lives in Fayetteville, West Virginia and is a professional kayaker. When he saw a photo on Facebook of an empty kayak floating in the Kanawha Falls area, it was a combination of a gut feeling and years of experience that helped save the missing kayaker.
The Sheriff’s Department, DNR officers and water rescue teams made up of local firefighters responded to the 911 call around 6 pm, but called off the search around 10 pm with no luck. That’s when Corey knew he had to jump in. He called on some friends and fellow kayakers to help him check a specific pocket in the falls.
“Knowing that with my extensive background of the area and paddling the falls hundreds of times, I knew that would be easily overlooked by search and rescue, and that’s somewhere that I wanted to check immediately, and that’s exactly where he was.”
Sam Davis had spent nearly 8 hours behind the waterfall. The group knew then they would have to lift him out from above. More local kayakers came, and they were able to send a rope in from above which Davis clipped to his harness to be lifted out.
Photo: Getty Images