Sheriff Martin Pace and Deputy John Elfer take Mike Evans and Tammy Wallace back to City Front Monday after searching the spot where Doris Evans is believed to have drowned while swimming in the Yazoo Diversion Canal. (The Vicksburg Post/MELANIE DUNCAN)

[07/17/01] A Warren County woman was presumed drowned after a swimming accident in the Yazoo Diversion Canal late Monday, authorities said.

The search for Doris White Evans, 42, which was called at dark Monday, resumed at 7 Tuesday morning with rescue boats from the Warren County Sheriff’s Department and the Department of Fish and Wildlife in the water, Warren County Sheriff Martin Pace said.

Authorities searched and dredged for more than four hours late Monday, returning six search boats to City Front at about 9 p.m. The Vicksburg Fire Department and its five divers assisted in the search Monday.

Mike Evans, 47, said he and his wife put their boat in at City Front at 1 p.m. Riding with the Evanses were friends Tammy Wallace, her 9-year-old daughter, Brittany, and Diane Stokes and her 9-year-old daughter, April. Evans said they rode around the canal until stopping to swim in a shoot of water, about 30 feet deep, northwest of Lake Centennial, near the Vicksburg harbor.

“We were just swimming, and the kids were joking around with her and she jumped in to swim with them,” Mike Evans said.

“I asked her if she was OK, and I saw her go under, and I went in with Tammy and we swam and dove and couldn’t find her,” he said.

He said his wife went under water at about 4 p.m. After he and the others searched for her, they returned to City Front and called for help, he said.

Deputies took Evans and Wallace by boat back to the accident site to search for Doris Evans, Pace said.

“You exhaust all possibilities of rescuing the victim before you switch to recovery mode. I hope she made it to the bank, injured but alive,” Pace said as the search began.

When he returned to City Front Monday night, the sheriff said, “we are in recovery mode.”

The drowning was the second at the Yazoo Diversion Canal in three weeks. Kirk Craig, 27, of Vicksburg, died June 23 after the car he was driving rolled into the canal and sank.

Doris Evans, a practiced swimmer who had been in the same body of water many times, was not wearing a life jacket, her husband said.

Evans said his wife was an asthma patient, but that she had not had an attack in the three years they had been married.

The Evanses, who met through her sister, Sissy White of Tallulah, celebrated their third wedding anniversary last month, Mike Evans said.

As he stood waiting at City Front Monday night, Evans said, “I just wish I could tell her I love her.”

Evans said neither he nor his wife was employed. “I was looking for a job, but she was going to go to school,” he said. “She was going to major in nursing.”

He said his wife has four children, ages 16 to 24, who live in Houston and near New Orleans.