PHILIP HOLMES/Sun-Gazette City police, paramedics and firefighters responded to the Hepburn Street dam about 3:20 p.m. when a man jumped into the river. His body was pulled from the water about 20 minutes later east of the dam. He was later pronounced dead in the emergency room at UPMC Williamsport.

After jumping off a diversion wall on the city side of the Hepburn Street dam on Saturday afternoon, a Williamsport area man drowned in the Susquehanna River, according to Lycoming County Coroner Charles E. Kiessling Jr.

A witness called 911 after seeing the man jump into the river from a concrete abutment diversion wall about 3:20 p.m., investigators were told. Kiessling released the man’s identity on Sunday afternoon as Tyler M. Lance, 37.

Lance had been seen “on the east side of the Hepburn Street dam walking around prior to jumping into the river for an unknown reason,” Kiessling said.

City police and firefighters were dispatched to the dam, and two boats – one from the city and the other from South Williamsport – were soon placed in the river at the Greevy boat launch, just west of Canfields Lane and Greevy Road in Loyalsock Township.

It was about 3:40 p.m. when the crew on a Geisinger Life Flight helicopter, returning to its base at the Williamsport Regional Airport in Montoursville following a medical call, spotted the man’s body face down, just west of the boat launch, about 20 to 30 yards from the city shoreline.

The helicopter crew hovered over the location until the fire boats reached Lance, pulled him out of the water and loaded him on to the city fire boat.

A paramedic and firefighter immediately began performing cardiopulmonary resuscitation on him as the boat quickly returned to the access ramp at Greevy. From there, the victim was rushed by ambulance to UPMC Williamport, where efforts to revive him were unsuccessful. Lance was pronounced dead at 4:22 p.m., Kiessling said.

The drowning occurred on the same afternoon that the body of 10-year-old Claue Schreffler-Algofera, of South Williamsport, was recovered from the river in Northumberland County.