Montgomery County Fire and Rescue officials recovered the body of an adult male in the Potomac River on Saturday, about a half mile south of Old Angler's Inn, the area where a Silver Spring swimmer went missing on Tuesday.
Montgomery County police have not yet identified the body to confirm that it is the missing swimmer, but they say it matches his description. Fire and Rescue officials said the swimmer was a 32-year-old Hispanic male wearing gray shorts.
According to a Montgomery County police statement, the man had been fishing with two adult male friends around 3:15 p.m. on Tuesday. He swam into the river because he felt the water where they had been fishing wasn't deep enough, according to the statement. As he swam further out into the Potomac, his friends noticed him struggling.
One of his friends tried to rescue him and swam to the Virginia side of the river as he searched. A white-water rafting group also tried to search for the man, according to the statement. After the unsuccessful searches, Fire and Rescue officials were called around 4:30 p.m. to help.
Swift water rescue teams, the Maryland State Police helicopter, and the U.S. Park Police helicopter searched the river for several days without finding the man. Saturday, the missing man's family had also been searching the shores of the Potomac when a fisherman noticed the body on some rocks.
Police are not releasing the name of the missing man until the body is identified.
Two Leesburg men drowned in the same area of the Potomac on June 21 after attempting to swim from the Virginia side of the river to the Maryland side. The bodies of Abdul Doraney, 22, and Asad Nabatzahi, 20, were recovered June 24.
Swimming is forbidden in the Potomac River Gorge, and the strong current can cause problems even for moderate swimmers, according to Scott Graham, Montgomery County Fire and Rescue service assistant chief. "It's illegal and it's dangerous to swim in that river and it has deadly consequences for those who don't obey that," Graham said.