Boaters Missing After Canoes Go Over Falls

Two people are missing after a boating accident in Minnesota's Boundary Waters Canoe Area in St. Louis County, near the state's border with Ontario, Canada. Two canoes went over Curtain Falls, between Crooked Lake and Iron Lake, Saturday night, the Minneapolis Star-Tribune reports. By just after midnight Sunday, two boaters had been rescued by helicopter—one of them with serious injuries—but two others remained missing. They were part of a group fishing in the area, Minnesota Public Radio reports. The search continued Monday, but poor weather and challenging water conditions were hampering it.

"Four of them were basically anchored at the top of the falls fishing, which they've done in the past, and it sounds like one of them may have had an issue and the other one went to try to give some assistance and both canoes and four people went over the falls," a sheriff's office division commander explains. Reis Melvin Grams, 40, and friend Jesse Melvin Haugen, 41, are missing. Grams' brother Erik Michael Grams, 43, was unharmed in the incident, and their friend Kyle Thomas Sellers, 47, was badly injured but is expected to live, CNN reports. A friend says one set of canoeists was in distress and Haugen was in the other set of canoeists, which attempted to help them, but details beyond that were not clear. (More Minnesota stories.)