Police divers assist in Ohio River clean-up (and maybe solve a cold case in the process)

Local law enforcement officers are helping to clean up the Ohio River and some cold cases this week. Members of the Hamilton County Police Association Dive and Recovery Team are working with Living Lands and Waters to remove vehicles from under the water.

Callie Schaser with the nonprofit group says they arrived in the area last Friday with a barge and an excavator and have pulled nine vehicles from the water already. She says for the last months, divers have been finding sunken cars using sonar and marking them with buoys. Schaser says they marked about 20.

The partnership started with the tornadoes in Kentucky and Indiana last December. Schaser says they knew there would be a lot of debris in Kentucky Lake along the Tennessee River.

“Living Lands and Waters went down there with our excavator barge and our little tugboat, and tried to remove as much as we could," she says.

She says they pulled 1.2 million pounds of debris from the water.