By JCpost.com

Recovery efforts to locate the victim of a drowning that occurred at Milford Lake on Christmas Eve will reconvene Tuesday.

Two Fort Riley soldiers were duck hunting around Charley’s Point on the lake in the early morning hours of Dec. 24 when one of them, Thomas Hedrick, 31, Fort Riley,  got into a boat and went to retrieve a duck they had shot. The boat began to take on water, and the wind blew the boat toward an ice sheet. Hedrick tried to get out of the boat onto the ice sheet, and the ice sheet would not support his weight.

The search for Hedrick was called off Dec. 24 due to poor weather conditions.

Geary County Sheriff Tony Wolf said 35 to 40 people will continue the search Tuesday morning.

“I have numerous boats coming in from across the state,” Wolf said. “I have boats that are equipped with enhanced side scan sonar. I have two dive teams that will be in here tomorrow and a whole bunch of personnel coming in to assist with this.”

Wolf said the cold weather has been the factor for holding off the search.

“I don’t want one tragedy to turn into two or three others,” he said. “Safety of the personnel out there trying to recover this individual is one of those things where we’ve got to get this done, but safety’s first and foremost in everybody’s mind.”

Multiple agencies will assist with the search, including officers from Geary County Sheriff’s Department, Geary County Emergency Management, Kansas Department of Emergency Management, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Kansas Department of Wildlife, Parks and Tourism, and Fort Riley.

Wolf told JCpost.com he is feeling confident about tomorrow’s search.

“The weather conditions are looking favorable, and the manpower and equipment are going to be here ready to go,” he said.