By JOSEPH B. NADEAU

CUMBERLAND – Police yesterday identified the 17-year-old victim of a tragic canoeing accident on the Blackstone River as William King IV of Crowell Street, a 2008 graduate of the high school and a student at the Community College of Rhode Island.

King had been canoeing with his father, William King III, 49, near Pratt Dam in Valley Falls Sunday afternoon when their boat became lodged against trees and other debris near five tube-like openings running under a Blackstone River Bikeway bridge at the site and overturned, according to Cumberland Police Sgt. Mark England.
The elder King passed through one of the five tube-like concrete and stone structures but his son, entangled in a rope attached to the canoe, became trapped inside another as the boat wedged across the openings, England said.
“His foot was entangled and he couldn’t break free,” England said. The youth was wearing a life jacket, but the force of the water tore it off as he was held head down in the tube.
An autopsy conducted by the state Medical Examiner on Monday found King to have died of asphyxiation related to him being trapped under water in the swiftly moving current, according to England, one of the local officers responding to accident with area rescue teams.
England said King’s leg was found to be firmly entangled in the rope and it is believed the cold of the water and its force, combined with injuries from the capsize prevented the boy from freeing himself.
The river takes several routes through the Pratt Dam area and the one the canoe entered had a swift current that may have been heightened by rains the day before, England said. The bikeway bridge was once part of a railroad trestle through the area.
Police responding to a 911 call at 12:20 p.m. assisted the father out of the downstream flow of the river and had to restrain the distraught man from attempts to re-enter the water, England said.
Rescue crews from Cumberland put a boat below the dam but were not able to make it up against the current to location where the boy was trapped.
“All efforts were futile. With the water running that high there was just no way to get to the boy,” he said.  Local rescue personnel were assisted by units from Lincoln, Woonsocket and North Smithfield in the effort. A large metal plate was eventually lowered by a crane over the tube intake and the body removed at about 4 p.m.
The elder King, who had suffered hypothermia while in the water, was taken to Memorial Hospital in Pawtucket for treatment, England said.