UPDATED: Kayaker identified in French Broad River death

Buncombe County Sheriff’s Office investigators pulled the body of a pinned kayaker from Ledges River Park outside of Asheville on Tuesday, marking the fourth kayaking death on Western North Carolina rivers so far this year, the deadliest for paddling accidents in more than a decade.

The victim was identified as Delmer Melvin Garratt, 56, of Lakeland, Florida.

Officials on scene at 1080 Old Marshall Highway responded to the call for assistance reporting an overturned kayak at 10:13 a.m., according to a statement from the Buncombe County Sheriff’s Office. Deputies were dispatched to the scene at 10:26 a.m., with the first deputy arriving on-scene five minutes later.

By that point, a rescue swimmer with Buncombe County Emergency Services had already tried and failed to make it out to the flipped kayak, said Emergency Management Planner Angie Ledford.

The current was too strong for the swimmer, who is a part of the county's urban search and rescue team, a 94-member unit that specializes in "anything from water rescues to land search and structure collapse," Ledford said.

Forty-two members of the team are trained in swift water rescue. Several of them were called into action Tuesday.

At about 11:15 a.m. a rescue team approached the kayak in a Zodiac, a small inflatable boat. They were able to free the kayaker and recover his body and boat. That rescue effort took about 30 minutes, Ledford said.

More: Kayaker drowns in the Linville River in the second paddling death in WNC this year

Asheville Fire and Rescue, Reems Creek Fire Department, French Broad Volunteer Fire Department and Weaverville Fire Department were all on-scene participating in this recovery effort.

Sheriff spokeswoman Natalie Bailey said at the scene that deputies will continue to investigate the death, per protocol, but that it appears to be accidental.

The fatality continues the deadliest kayaking streak in decades. Tuesday's drowning marks the fourth paddling death on a Western North Carolina River this year.

According to American Whitewater, a nonprofit river advocacy and access group that tracks paddling accidents and fatalities on rivers across the country, the last fatalities before this year were in 2014.

That year, a 64-year-old man died while kayaking on the Cheoah River in the Graham County area of Nantahala National Forest, and a 45-year-old women died when she fell out of an inner tube on the French Broad River in Hot Springs. She wasn't wearing a life jacket.

There were no deaths reported on WNC rivers in the past three years.

On May 5, Matthew Scott Ray, 19, of Fairview, died while kayaking the Class V Green River Narrows, an extremely remote and difficult section of the river on the Green River Game Land in Polk County. The 2017 Reynolds High School graduate was considered an expert paddler who had run the river “thousands” of times.

He had been paddling with friends through a rapid known as “Go Left” when his boat got pinned on the right side against a rock. While friends worked to free him, Ray’s legs were pinned in the boat by the force of the water. He died on scene before first responders were able to pull him from the boat about an hour and a half after the emergency call.

On April 28, William HalliBurton, "Burton" Greer IV, 32, of Atlanta, died in an accident on the Linville River in the Burke County area of Pisgah National Forest. Friends described him as an expert paddler who was well versed in WNC whitewater rivers.

On March 3, Maria Noakes, 50, of Bryson City, died in a kayaking accident on the Cheoah River. Noakes, an expert, world-champion kayaker originally from New Zealand, had been paddling with her two young sons and friends, but no one witnessed the accident.

MORE: Asheville kayaker and mom drowns in Cheoah

The folks pouring into Justyn Thompson’s Southern Raft Supply, a shop on Riverside Drive not far from Ledges Park, were all aware of the accident Tuesday, and all asking who it was and what kind of boat he was paddling.

The latest river death has hit the kayaking community hard, Thompson said. While Noakes, Greer and Ray were all experienced on kayakers who were running Class V whitewater, Thompson said the drowning Tuesday was more unusual since it took place on a Class 2 rapid, considered a good place for beginners learning to kayak.

“Typically when something like this happens there’s some mistake. Today’s fatal mistake was going alone. That’s one of the easiest to avoid,” Thompson said.

“Everybody knows the risk. It’s always in the back of your mind. I’ve seen just in the last few weeks, people getting a little more timid, because they’re seeing this a lot now, and they’re scared, they’re nervous and nervous for their friends. The kayaking community is small. Everyone looks out for each other.”

“I think while there has been a spurt of accidents on the rivers the past couple of months, you have to look at it over the course of time, how many people are on these rivers,” said John Grace, an elite kayaker and founder and director of the world-famous Green River Narrows Race.

“When you look at the volume of people who are out there, there are literally thousands of people who go through these rapids each year. I’ve been kayaking for 30 years,” said Grace, 41. “It seems like there are these waves of things happening. I saw it in the '90s and early 2000s and now it’s just happened again.”

A previous version of this story misidentified the high school Garratt attended.

More: Fairview teen dies on Green River in 3rd WNC kayaking death of 2018