Body Recovered Of Barge Worker Who Fell Into LMR Near New Orleans

Coast Guard Sector New Orleans received a call about 2:30 a.m. on Saturday, October 14, from National Maintenance & Repair of Louisiana regarding a missing worker who had reportedly last been seen aboard a barge on the Lower Mississippi River near the Huey P. Long Bridge, according to a press release from the U.S. Coast Guard.

The barge worker, a 55-year-old welder named Darrell Roberson, is believed to have fallen into the river. According to Roberson’s sister, Zina Groover, on a Go Fund Me page, Roberson was employed by a staffing agency and not National Maintenance & Repair.

The Coast Guard press release stated that watchstanders issued an urgent marine information broadcast, while also launching an MH-60 Jayhawk helicopter and a 29-foot response boat. The Coast Guard noted that a life jacket was found onboard the barge.

In the hours that followed, Coast Guard crews searched 20 miles downriver of the Huey P. Long Bridge, amounting to a total of 164 square nautical miles, finally suspending the search shortly after 7 p.m. on October 14.

“The decision to suspend a search-and-rescue case is never an easy one to make,” said Lt. Commander Ben Walsh, enforcement division chief for Sector New Orleans. “We offer our deepest sympathies to the family during this difficult time.”

Two days later, though, a crew with the Harbor Police of the Port of New Orleans, which continued search-and-rescue efforts, found a body in the same vicinity of the river. The family later positively identified the body as that of Roberson.

On social media and in local media coverage, family members called Roberson a helper who could fix anything. Now, they’re asking for help to cover the costs of his funeral.

“Now, it is left up to us the family to provide him the proper funeral services he so well deserves,” Groover wrote on Go Fund Me.

According to the Coast Guard, the cause of the event remains under investigation.