Two California men died after their speedboat crashed into the banks of the Colorado River Tuesday afternoon, according to the Mohave County Sheriff\u2019s Office.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Noah Welch, 33, and James Rutherford\u00a0Jr., 53, had been boating north \u201cat a high rate of speed\u201d when their boat lost control near the river\u2019s Topock Gorge, the sheriff\u2019s office said. The gorge is a mountainous stretch where the river divides Arizona and California.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The sheriff\u2019s office said the watercraft, a 25-foot Dave\u2019s Custom Boat, collided with the rocky banks on the Arizona side of the river, north of Lake\u00a0Havasu. Authorities responded at around 4:50 p.m., recovering the boat from the reeds of the California shoreline.\u00a0<\/p>\n
One of the men was pronounced dead at the scene, while the other died later at a local hospital.\u00a0<\/p>\n
A social media profile for Welch identifies him as a resident of\u00a0Roseville (Placer County) and a motorcycle enthusiast and outdoorsman. A vigil for Welch was scheduled for 6 p.m. Wednesday at his motorcycle repair shop, Welch Motor Sports.\u00a0<\/p>\n
In recent posts, Welch can be seen boating at high speeds on the Sacramento River and\u00a0Folsom Lake in what appears to be the same boat that crashed Tuesday. In one post from October, Welch wrote that he \u201cgot to show\u201d two friends \u201cwhat 100 mph on the water feels like today.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Two California men died after their speedboat crashed into the banks of the Colorado River Tuesday afternoon, according…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":258329,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[7,9,8,2013],"class_list":{"0":"post-258328","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-california","8":"tag-california","9":"tag-california-headlines","10":"tag-california-news","11":"tag-us-and-world"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/258328","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=258328"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/258328\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/258329"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=258328"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=258328"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=258328"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}