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Need more prayers for my family...brother is missing See article below. My brother Joel Thompson Jr is 48. He is missing. Please pray that we recover his body. My mother and my sister in law and nephew cannot move on without closure. WE all can't. My heart is hurting. It has been over a week.
My brother was an avid fisherman, who held a captain's licence. He was very aware of the dangers and fished often alone at night.
Please pray that he comes home so we can remember him properly.
thanks!
Beth
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Lewes angler Joel Thompson
goes missing at Indian River Inlet
By Rob Kunzig
Of the many anglers Bill Baker has seen at the Indian River Inlet, Joel Thompson is the last person he’d expected to disappear off the rocks. Thompson is a seasoned angler, Baker said, and took precautions against tumbling into the inlet’s treacherous waters. But he’s been missing since the night of Monday, April 26, when he left his Lewes home to fish the jetties.
“He’s a very experienced jetty jockey,” said Baker, who owns Bill’s Sport Shop on Route 1. “He spent all of his free time fishing.” State police said Thompson left home at 11 p.m. Monday, April 26, telling his wife he was going fishing. Baker said she called state police the following morning, when he didn’t come home to take his children to school. Police found his Toyota Tacoma parked at the inlet, but Thompson is still missing.
Boats from Lewes Volunteer Fire Department and the Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Control (DNREC) prowled the inlet waters the following day, searching for a sign of Thompson. State police divers plunged off the jetty on the inlet’s south side, searching for scraps of clothing or personal effects. Workers with the Bethany Beach Volunteer Fire Company established a perimeter, and U.S. Coast Guard boats searched the waters around the inlet.
Bridgeville resident Fred Matthews watched the DNREC boat cut across the mouth of the inlet. “You’ve got to be careful,” he said. “Common sense, that’s it.” Matthews has been fishing the inlet for three years. Whenever he fishes the jetty, he wears a life jacket and straps spiked soles on his boots to give him better purchase on the rocks.
By 4 p.m., Tuesday, April 27 DNREC Chief Wayne Kline said the divers had suspended their search, though officials with the Division of Fish and Wildlife continued to scan the surrounding shorelines. On Thursday, April 29, Kline said DNREC boats had discontinued their efforts, though vessels on regular patrol were keeping an eye out.
DNREC enforcement Sgt. Gregory Rhodes said officials will probably soon use boats equipped with sonar to scan the inlet bottom. In the meantime, he said, state parks officials will continue searching the surrounding shorelines.
Baker said Thompson, a licensed captain, was familiar with the sea and its hazards. Like Matthews, Thompson wore a life jacket and spiked soles, called korkers. Baker described the fisherman as down-to-earth, a skilled angler who didn’t brag. His Toyota Tacoma is spangled with stickers of striped bass, Baker said, and loaded with fishing tackle. He said one could pick Thompson out of a crowd of jetty jockeys by the Wawa mug he held in one hand and the cigar in the other.
“He’s your typical, hardcore fisherman,” Baker said. On a corkboard in his shop, Baker tacked up a picture of Thompson holding a 35-pound striped bass in 2008. Written in marker above his portrait: R.I.P. Joel Thompson. At time of press, (5 p.m. Thursday, April 29,) Thompson was still missing.
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