Larimer County – As daybreak approaches and waves gently lap against Tom Greenhalgh’s search boat in Carter Lake, a few men drop torpedolike sonar equipment into the azure water and wait for a sign of 2-year-old Shay Smith.
Minutes turn to hours. Morning gives way to afternoon.
Nothing.
It’s not easy, Greenhalgh admits, on that lake southwest of Loveland, knowing that a dead boy is nearly 130 feet below.
“But you can’t think of that,” says the search-and-rescue team member from Massachusetts, who volunteered his sonar expertise to the group that so far has used 35 volunteer divers. “I just want to help this boy’s family.”
Greenhalgh got the message late Sunday from Larimer County: Shay had fallen off the back of his father’s 17-foot Bayliner on Saturday night as they passed the lake’s southernmost dam at 35 mph. The boy was drinking root beer near his 3-year-old brother when he was blown from his seat, into the water and out of his life jacket.
Shay hasn’t been seen since. A sticky spray of root beer still lingered along the back of the boat.
Shay’s father, Gil Smith, said the family wants closure.
“We are confident that Shay’s body will be found and will be brought back to us so we can put an end to this tragedy,” he said.
Greenhalgh, a Billerica, Mass., police lieutenant by trade and a member of the International Association of Dive Rescue Specialists, has been on five of these searches in the past 12 months.
“We found every one of them,” says Greenhalgh, who has 20 years of diving experience.
So the graying 44-year-old arrived in Colorado at 4 a.m. Wednesday, bleary-eyed but ready. Greenhalgh began his search with 10 divers, sonar equipment from Florida and a robotic, underwater camera.
As of late Wednesday, the boy’s body had not been found.
Greenhalgh wants to be back on the water as soon as possible.
“We’ll do 16-hour days if we have to. I need to find that little boy now,” he says.
