25-year-old Burlington woman found dead in Huntington River
July 15, 2023 | By Lisa Scagliotti A missing person case near Huntington Gorge in Richmond has turned into a death investigation as the Vermont State Police reports the recovery of the body of a 25-year-old Burlington woman Saturday afternoon.
Katie Hartnett. Photo courtesy Vt. State Police
Katie Hartnett, 25, of Burlington, was reported missing late Friday after state police in Williston received a call just before 9:30 p.m. that a vehicle had been parked on the side of Dugway Road for hours.
Police say they determined it was Hartnett’s vehicle and friends and family said that she had not been seen since 1 p.m., nor were they successful in attempts to contact her.
At about noon on Saturday, police said that the crew of a Vermont Air National Guard helicopter located Hartnett’s body in the Huntington River adjacent to 1498 Dugway Road.
Technical rescue teams on the ground then began a recovery operation which took about an hour, police said.
The report by Detective Sgt. Aimee Nolan and Trooper Shawn Cavic states that the Vermont State Police investigation so far has determined that Hartnett was visiting the Huntington River upstream of the Huntington Gorge on Friday afternoon when she slipped and fell into the water.
When asked how investigators reached that conclusion, state police spokesman Adam Silverman in an email to Waterbury Roundabout replied, “Through investigation and evidence, there is no indication that this was anything other than an accident.”
The search and recovery operation involved about 40 individuals from Richmond Rescue, Colchester Technical Rescue, Stowe Technical Rescue and North Carolina Task Force 2 – a swift water rescue team from Buncombe County, North Carolina, in Vermont following this week’s widespread flooding.
Other state responders included the Vermont Department of Public Safety search and rescue coordinator along with state police units including the Unmanned Aircraft Systems Program, Field Force, Bureau of Criminal Investigations, and the Victim Services Unit.
Hartnett’s body was taken to the Chief Medical Examiner’s Office in Burlington for an autopsy to determine the cause and manner of death, police said.
This incident comes less than two weeks after the drowning death of a 21-year-old St. Michael’s College student at the Bolton Potholes swimming hole in nearby Bolton. Samuel Most Paprin of Greenwich, Connecticut, died in a swimming accident there on July 4.