Body found of man who disappeared in flooding

Associated Press

ELLICOTT CITY, MD.

Searchers on Tuesday scouring a river alongside an historic Maryland town ripped apart by flash flooding found the body of a man last seen being swept away by the raging waters as it gutted shops and pushed parked cars into swollen tributaries.

Volunteers and crews with trained dogs had been methodically hunting for 39-year-old Eddison Hermond. He disappeared Sunday afternoon, after torrential rains that prompted destructive flash flooding in historic Ellicott City.

It was the second time Ellicott City’s downtown district was hit by deadly floodwaters in less than two years.

On Tuesday afternoon, Hermond’s body was located in the Patapsco River. He was the only person reported missing in Ellicott City – established in 1772 as a mill town – where many now can’t get the roar of rushing waters out of their heads.

“To have died helping somebody else is incredible. And I can’t even imagine the loss his family is suffering,” said Nicholas Johnson, owner of a store near the spot where Hermond vanished. He disappeared while trying to help a woman who was escaping the flooded zone with her cat.

Hermond, of Severn, Md., was a veteran of the U.S. Air Force and a sergeant in the Maryland Army National Guard. He was described by those who knew him as an affable, generous man.

Sunday’s torrential rains came just as the commercial district seemed to have come back stronger than ever from the July 2016 flash flood that killed two people.