LAKE OF THE OZARKS, Mo. — It may never be known whether Brandon Ellingson jumped or fell from a Highway Patrol boat on May 31, while under arrest for boating while intoxicated. And it may never be known exactly when his life jacket came off. But witnesses to the handcuffed drowning generally agreed in their testimony to investigators: Trooper Anthony Piercy struggled mightily to rescue Ellingson after the Iowa man went overboard.
Piercy arrested Brandon Ellingson on suspicion of boating while intoxicated—toxicology later revealed Ellingson had a blood-alcohol content of .285, more than three times the legal limit, and also had cocaine in his system. The details of the arrest have come under fierce scrutiny, with witnesses and a seasoned water patrol officer expressing dismay over Piercy’s admitted haste, evidenced in the way the life jacket was put on Ellingson, his placement next to the trooper at the helm, and the speed at which Piercy was driving the patrol boat just before Ellingson went overboard.
But on board the Playin’ Hooky Water Taxi were more than 20 people, some of whom were part of a bachelorette party. That boat was near enough to the incident that most of those aboard saw Piercy struggle mightily to save Ellingson’s life. Several say they also remember seeing Ellingson at Coconuts Bar and Grill, where he had been before he was arrested.
No one saw Ellingson go overboard, other than Piercy, and even he says it happened so fast, he was not sure whether the handcuffed 20-year-old jumped or fell. Piercy says he had been approaching two large boat wakes, and slowed the 29-foot Donzi before cresting the first. Then, he recalls, Ellingson’s feet went in the air and he was overboard.
When asked by investigators whether he thinks Ellingson jumped or fell, Piercy replied in a voice shaking with emotion: “I’ve… played the scenario through my mind a million times, and… I don’t know. All I know is he’s beside me, and then he’s not.”
The trooper turned the boat hard to starboard, goosed the throttle momentarily, and killed the engine, fearing Ellingson might be struck by the propellers.
“Don’t move, I’m coming back for you!” Piercy says he yelled to Ellingson.
Passing by at a couple hundred yards were Larry and Paulette Moreau.
When they were interviewed after the incident, the Moreaus said they had seen Piercy’s boat before Ellingson went overboard, but they didn’t see Ellingson enter the water.
The Moreaus originally disagreed about the safety of Piercy’s speed in the moments before the incident. Larry said he felt the boat was not being operated recklessly and was not traveling too fast; Paulette said she felt it was going too fast for the water conditions.
But after observing for a while, they continued on, commenting later that they saw the party boat pulling closer to the scene, and they thought the trooper had everything under control.
Witnesses on the Playin’ Hooky boat were still too far away to help, but the captain threw a life preserver ring to Ellingson—not realizing he was handcuffed.
Meanwhile, Piercy was flustered—the boat had drifted away from Ellingson, and the trooper was trying unsuccessfully to restart the boat.
“I was really starting to panic,” Piercy recalled. But he quickly realized the throttles were not in neutral; once he put them there, the engines fired up, and he swung the boat around and approached Ellingson.
“At this point, I can still see his head above water, but the life jacket is floating beside him,” the trooper told investigators. Witnesses on the party boat depicted the jacket as floating with the straps in the water, making it difficult to tell whether they were buckled or unbuckled.
Above is the life jacket Brandon Ellingson was wearing when he entered the water, but which quickly came off. Witnesses disagree about whether the Type-III vest was buckled or unbuckled as it floated near Ellingson in the water.
He killed the engines again, and grabbed a pole with a hook on the end, extending it in an attempt to pull Ellingson in. But he was unsuccessful, and the boat drifted, putting the man out of Piercy's reach.
Witnesses remember hearing Ellingson groaning as he struggled to stay afloat.
Ellingson, a football player with an athletic build, was beginning to sink, coming up for air briefly, but clearly unable to stay above water. The water was rough: Ellingson had gone overboard in a narrow portion of the Lake on a busy weekend at the Lake of the Ozarks.
“Keep kicking!” a witness recalled hearing several aboard the party boat yell.
Some were yelling at Piercy to jump in.
Piercy dropped his gun belt, and leapt into the Lake. But at this point—by his account—Ellingson had gone under.
Some of the witnesses aboard the party boat described the scene in a way similar to Piercy’s account. Others remembered the details somewhat differently. Several described Piercy as having hold of Ellingson at the surface, but as being unable to hang on to him.
Several witnesses recalled Ellingson’s last audible words: “Oh my God.”
Piercy says he dove beneath the surface, and estimates he went down eight to ten feet—noting he remembers his ears popping—before he felt Ellingson. The man was struggling still: kicking and thrashing, and Piercy received myriad bruises as a result.
“My thought process was to get ahold of him, deploy my lifejacket and float us both to the surface, and then just hang on to him until help arrived… I could see him below the surface when I jumped in.”
“I wrapped my arm around him to keep ahold of him… I’m kicking and at the same time when I have ahold of him, I’m… reaching down with this hand and I’m trying to deploy my rip cord on my fanny pack. And - and - I - I can’t find the rip cord.”
Then, Piercy lost Ellingson. “I let go of him to try and find the rip cord,” he said, “and then I can’t. I reach and I momentarily, um, I think I have the rip cord and… but I go to reach back for him cause I don’t want to pull it until I have hold of him again, and I can’t re-find him. I… consciously tried to dive and from where I was at in the water and feel around more and just see if I could - I could feel him and I just, I never did reacquire him under the water.”
On the verge of drowning, Piercy struggled to the surface.
One woman remembers Piercy crying when he emerged from the water; another says he apologized to the passengers, that they had seen the incident unfold; another remembered him saying, “I tried my best.”
Another witness said some of the women aboard were yelling at Piercy, and some of them became sick after watching the incident unfold, vomiting over the side of the boat.
Many noted Piercy had tried hard to save Ellingson; many said he likely would have drowned too, had the Playin’ Hooky boat not been there.
Utterly exhausted, the trooper says he clung to the side of the party boat.
Piercy’s Donzi had drifted a significant distance away, and he knew he would not be able to swim back to it in his current state. So he held onto the Playin’ Hooky boat, and Captain Jim Bascue drove Piercy to his Donzi.
Once aboard, Piercy tossed his fanny-pack inflatable life preserver onto the captain’s dashboard, according to Bascue, saying “It didn’t even work.”
Ellingson’s body was located on June 1, and pulled from 71 feet of water at 11:05 a.m.
