This Jaguar can't swim: Luxury car will stay in French Broad for a while

Mark Barrett | The Citizen-Times

ASHEVILLE – Jaguars with four legs will dive into the water to pursue their prey and are considered good swimmers.

Jaguars with four wheels, not so much.

So it will eventually fall to city police to remove a Jaguar car in the French Broad River near the Craven Street bridge. People floating the river Saturday spotted the vehicle.

Police and fire workers checked the car late Saturday afternoon and found no one inside, police spokeswoman Christina Hallingse said.

The luxury car was reported stolen May 31 and the police investigation is continuing, she said.

She declined to speculate on why someone would have driven the car into the river.

A N.C. Wildlife Resource Commission boat ramp a little upstream from the bridge provides easy access to the French Broad, but no vehicle was visible from there at midday Monday. The Craven Street bridge is a short distance upstream from Bowen Bridge.

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Three men working on the city's RADTIP project in the River Arts District were looking at the water and discussing how far a vehicle might float downstream if someone drove it down the boat ramp.

The car isn't going anywhere for a while, Hallingse said, because the higher water level in the river would make extraction difficult. The car will be removed after the river level drops, she said.

"We are developing a plan" for removal, she said. "It's just challenging because vehicles are heavy, especially when they are waterlogged and wedged in with silt."

Following an exceptionally wet May, the amount of water flowing in the French Broad Monday was a little shy of twice the normal for June, as measured at a gauge about 1.5 miles downstream from the Craven Street bridge.