Divers hope pig carcass in icy river will help locate drowned Manitoba boy

Steve Lambert -

Divers have been trying for a month to find the body of a six-year-old boy who fell through thin ice while playing with his older brother on the Red River in Manitoba's capital.

On Wednesday they dumped a pig carcass into the water in the hope it might drift the same way Nathanial Thorassie's body did and lead them to its resting place.

The dive team's leader said there was only one reason for the unusual approach.

"No six-year-old boy belongs at the bottom of a river. No family needs to think their boy is at the bottom of a river," Sgt. Rob Riffel, head of the Winnipeg Police Service dive unit, said as his crew methodically set up ropes and other gear to protect them from the water that is still not entirely frozen over.

"They need closure and we want to try to provide that to them."

Led by Gordon Giesbrecht, a kinesiology professor at the University of Manitoba who specializes in the effects of extreme weather on the human body, divers slowly dragged the pig carcass in a small sled to the edge of the open water in the middle of the river.

Giesbrecht dumped it in. The carcass was attached to a rope that he held as he walked along the shore as the pig's body slowly drifted downstream.

"We're just trying some different things," he said. "We might be here a day or two. We're not going to get an answer right now, but we'll shed some light on what is possible and what is probably less possible."

A pig is about the same size as a human child and has a similar lung capacity, Riffel said.

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