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You Will Be Missed Eugene!!!
https://www.facebook.com/498773620216378/posts/2197641546996235/April 20, 2019 - 12:51 PM
A conservation officer with the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources was found dead Friday after falling from a boat into Cross Lake, near Pine City, Minn., while responding to a report of a possible body in the water.
The officer, identified by the DNR as Eugene Wynn, was responding to a call at about 7:45 p.m. from a witness who reported seeing an object, possibly a body, in the lake. Wynn, accompanied by a Pine County Sheriff's Office deputy, went out in a boat to inspect the object, according to the Pine County Sheriff's Office.
"Within a minute of leaving the launch, both officers were thrown from the boat into the water," the Sheriff's Office said in a statement.
The two began swimming toward shore while other deputies at the scene tried to rescue them in a boat borrowed from a neighbor. They successfully retrieved the sheriff's deputy, but "[t]he Conservation Officer slipped under the water before they could get to him," the statement said.
Wynn's body was found at about 1:30 a.m. Saturday following a search involving DNR officers from Minnesota and Wisconsin, the Minnesota State Patrol, the Chisago County Sheriff's Office, Pine City Fire, Stacy/Lent Fire and St. Louis County Rescue.
The sheriff's deputy was taken by ambulance to Firstlight Hospital in Mora, where "he was treated for temperature related injuries" and released, the statement said.
Wynn, 43, had been a conservation officer for the DNR for 18 years.
The cause of death has not been released. The incident is under investigation and an autopsy will be conducted, the statement said.
The object that the witness had initially reported was never found, the statement said. "We do not have any reports of a missing person and no further searches will be conducted at this time," it