NEWPORT, Ark. (AP) — Authorities have found the body of a man who had been missing in rising floodwaters on a road near the Black River in northeastern Arkansas.
State troopers and sheriff’s deputies had been searching for 76-year-old Loyd Cockrell before finding his body Saturday morning on a flooded part of Highway 37 near the unincorporated community of Cord.
A state police spokesman says investigators suspect Cockrell, a Jonesboro resident, died late Friday while attempting to drive to Batesville in the heavy rain that’s been pounding the Mississippi and Tennessee valleys for days.
Jackson County Sheriff David Lucas told KAIT television that Cockrell appears to have driven around a series of barricades authorities erected on the road to protect people from the rising water.
The sheriff called the death a senseless tragedy.
