A 73-year-old Atlanta-area man is dead after drowning last week on the Tennessee side of Great Smoky Mountains National Park, according to reports.
The accident happened about 2:15 p.m. last Friday.
Stephen Musser of Roswell was swimming at the base of Abrams Falls, south of Knoxville, when a strong current apparently pulled him underwater, the News Sentinel reported.
A statement from National Park Service officials said he never resurfaced.
Emergency crews from several agencies, including the Army National Guard, park rangers and a dive team, launched a search and recovered Musser’s body about 9:30 p.m., the News Sentinel reported.
His remains were located “near the base of the falls entrapped by underwater debris,” rangers said in the statement, according to the newspaper.
Musser’s death marks the 10th accidental drowning at Abrams Falls since the park was officially established in 1934, authorities said.
“Park streams often have strong, unexpected currents that can hold a swimmer under water and the stream beds are littered with rocks and sunken logs that can snag or entrap a swimmer,” the park warned in the statement, according to the News Sentinel.
The following day, another man from Fairview, Tennessee, was killed about 24 miles north of the area where Musser died.
In that accident, David Wayne Birdsong, 57, lost control of his motorcycle on Foothills Parkway and landed in a drainage ditch, NBC 10 News reported.
Great Smoky Mountains National Park is situated on 522,419 acres along the border of Tennessee and North Carolina.
The park is ranked fifth among a list of the 10 most dangerous camping spots in America, according to Summer Camp Hub, which filed a Freedom of Information request to the National Park Service.
“The mountainous range is responsible for 101 casualties, with 44 of those coming from motor vehicle crashes,” the website reports.
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