A central Kentucky man has died in a tubing incident.
The Franklin County Sheriff’s Office responded to the accident Saturday afternoon at Elkhorn Creek after a group of family and friends were tubing. Several people went underwater but surfaced unharmed as one man, 25-year-old Michael Looby, of Winchester, failed to emerge.
One of the people tubing, Lydia Anglin, Looby’s fiance, told WKYT.com that the boat pulling the tubers was going “too fast.”
“We tried to paddle, and to be honest, I don’t even know how four out of the five of us came up. It just sucked us under,” she said. “As soon as we got in, there was nothing we could do. We didn’t even get a couple hundred yards down and we all went under.”
All the tubers were wearing life jackets but were pulled into underwater trees.
“The tubes got caught in the trees, so we went under a tree. It’s a tree, and there were big, exposed roots, and the water was flowing through it and we went under,” Anglin told WKYT.com. “Me and my aunt, and my parents, we went under and out, tunnel style, but my parents were under for a really long time. We pulled them out of the water, barely conscious.”
The search for Looby ended at approximately 12:30 Monday afternoon when his body was recovered from Kentucky River, about two miles from where Elkhorn Creek meets the river.
The body was transported to the state Medical Examiner’s Office.
(Photo l-r: Michael Looby, Lydia Anglin, courtesy of social media)
By Ken Howlett, News Director
Contact Ken at ken@k105.com
