Updated at 9 am to correct the name of the worker.
Updated at 11:45 p.m.
The St. Louis Post-Dispatch is reporting that divers have recovered the body of the carpenter, who East St. Louis police identified to the paper as Aaron Andy Gammon. The paper says Gammon was still tethered to the aerial lift that plunged into the water on Wednesday.
His body has been turned over the the St. Clair County coroner.
Our earlier story:
Contractors for the new Mississippi River Bridge project are preparing to send a diver to the riverbed in search of a carpenter who plunged into the water yesterday morning while harnessed to an aerial lift.
The missing worker has been "tentatively identified" in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch by the East St. Louis Police Department as Andy Gammon of Park Hills.
Greg Horn, director for the project for the Missouri Department of Transportation, says work crews are building a barrier upstream from where they believe the lift is resting.
"Once they get it so the diver can get down there, that's going to be a judgment call when they get to that point," Horn says." He's going to go down there and see what he can find. I don't know if there's anybody who'll know anything until they get to that situation."
Rescuers halted their search yesterday afternoon due to strong river currents. All work on the bridge project has been suspended.
