Donora, Murrysville, Greensburg dive teams help pull Fayette County crash victim, vehicle from West Virginia lake

With an 8-inch sheet of ice atop the frigid water beneath their feet, dive teams from Murrysville Medic One and the Donora and Greensburg volunteer fire departments helped pull a vehicle and remains of a Fayette County resident from West Virginia’s Cheat Lake Sunday.

Kevin Laitalle, 59, of Smithfield, and his Hyundai Tucson were recovered from the icy waters near Morgantown on Sunday afternoon, according to Monongalia County Sheriff Todd Forbes.

Video footage from a nearby home revealed the vehicle plummeted more than 100 feet from a bridge along Interstate 68 around noon on Jan. 19, according to a statement Forbes released Monday.

The Greensburg Volunteer Fire Department and Murrysville Medic One were contacted Wednesday to assist with the recovery, said George McFarland — captain of the Greensburg dive team.

“Sometimes in a situation like this, it seems like it’s a long drawn out matter and ‘Why did you wait so long?’ It wouldn’t necessarily happen that way if this was the summertime,” McFarland said.

“But the wintertime, with the ice, created a whole different situation. The length of the bridge over Interstate 68 is over 1,000 feet long, and that posed a problem, because the debris field was right in the center of the bridge, which put it right in the center of the lake.”

Braving the ice

Greensburg and Murrysville crews, along with the Donora Volunteer Fire Department dive team, helped the sheriff’s office devise a plan to safely cross the ice and extract the vehicle.

Though there are dive teams stationed closer to Morgantown than the Southwestern Pennsylvania trio of teams, none were equipped to contend with the ice, said Darrick Gerano — director of Murrysville Medic One’s dive team.

“Ice diving requires some specialized training,” he said, “and they did not have anybody in the area who felt comfortable doing it.”

Step-by-step recovery

A 12-person team clutched a line tied to an inflatable raft Sunday as they walked out onto the frozen lake — listening intently for cracking sounds and pausing to test the thickness of the ice.

It took more than 45 minutes to reach the spot where Laitalle’s vehicle broke through the week prior, McFarland said.

Another crew manned a tow truck parked on the bridge. A third stood on the shore, ready to pull the dive team back to safety, Gerano said.

“There’s a lot more safety measures that go into play when it’s ice diving, because basically, your diver is in a confined space where if it was in the middle of the summer and we were diving in a lake and the diver has an emergency, they can come up to the surface.

“You can’t necessarily do that when you’re under ice,” Gerano said. “There’s just one access hole in and one access hole out.”

Crews sliced a triangle-shaped opening in the ice near the debris left behind from Laitalle’s vehicle.

Team effort

A diver from Donora donned a dry suit and took the plunge. With only 15 minutes to search before the risk of hypothermia set in, the diver located the vehicle and connected it to a line dropped from the tow truck on the bridge.

Gerano commended the work of the EMS, police and fire departments from Pennsylvania, Maryland and West Virginia who assisted in the recovery.

“Everybody worked very well together,” he said. “The operation itself had no hiccups. It went so smooth, which isn’t always the case when we get out there.”

With more than six decades of service under its belt, the Greensburg dive team has assisted with local and out-of-state investigations — occasionally branching into Ohio, West Virginia, Maryland and parts of New York and New Jersey.

The team prepares for moments like this, McFarland said.

“A lot of people ask why we train and why we train so much,” he said. “It’s because of situations like this. A lot of this stuff, you have to think outside the box. You have specific training that you undertake and then when you get in a situation like this, you have to adapt to the situation.”

The Monongalia County Sheriff’s Office is continuing to investigate the accident. Any information can be directed to the detective division, 304-291-7260.