Two boys drown in canal
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ST. IGNATIUS — A family vacation turned tragic Saturday evening when two boys drowned in an irrigation canal off St. Mary’s Lake Road east of St. Ignatius.
Eight-year-old Dennis Beauchamp and his older brother Harry, 15, were on a family camping trip visiting friends on the Flathead Reservation last weekend. The Beauchamps are from the Wolf Point area, according to a news release from the Lake County Sheriff’s Office. Dennis, Harry and Harry’s girlfriend were on a walk down an irrigation canal from a campground at St. Mary’s Lake when Dennis slipped on a footbridge over the canal and fell in.
“(Dennis) was gonna take a picture of his brother and his (brother’s) girlfriend,” Lake County Sheriff’s Lt. Mike Sargeant said.
Harry knew his younger brother couldn’t swim and jumped in after him. The girl, the only witness to the accident, turned around to find a long stick to try to reach the boys, but “when she turned back around they had both gone under,” Sargeant said.
She then ran about a mile back to the campground to get help, and authorities were alerted at 7:30 p.m. The two boys were pulled from the canal and taken to St. Luke Community Hospital in Ronan, where “despite all attempts to revive them, both boys were pronounced dead at 10:24 p.m.,” according to a LCSO news release.
The canal was about six feet deep where Harry fell in, Sargeant said, but “the current was running pretty swift.”
He cautioned people recreating near canals and irrigation ditches to be extremely careful and to keep pets away from the water. Although they’re usually fairly shallow, canals’ strong currents can be deceiving.
“(Canals) are very difficult to get out of,” Sargeant said. “We’ve had several (incidents) in the last year … those are really serious death traps.”
