As a half-dozen friends of missing Eveleth student Dan Zamlen met to continue the search effort today, they received the news they had been dreading the most.
A body had been pulled from the Mississippi River in St. Paul a couple of hours earlier, and it was later confirmed to be that of their friend.
Dan Zamlen was a freshman at the University of St. Thomas who would have celebrated his 19th birthday just a few days after he went missing in the early hours of April 5. He had not been seen or heard from since a cell phone conversation with a friend was broken off as he walked along the Mississippi River.
About noon today, police officers recovered a body from the river near the Ford Motor Company plant in St. Paul. The Ford Dam is about 1.2 miles downriver from the spot where Zamlen was last known to be, at the intersection of St. Clair Avenue and Mississippi River Boulevard in St. Paul.
Dan's parents, Dale and Sally Zamlen, viewed the body later this afternoon to make an identification. Police confirmed the identification this evening.
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Within hours, a Facebook page set up by the Find Dan search and rescue volunteers had tributes and messages of sympathy posted on it.
"This wasn't what we wanted," said long-time family friend Susan Krisak, holding back tears as she arrived at the Find Dan office at the Coates Plaza Hotel in Virginia.
Krisak had graduated with Dan Zamlen's mother, and her daughter, Nicole, attended Virginia High School with Dan Zamlen, a 2008 graduate.
