RECOVERY — Investigators look on as First Class Towing from East Liverpool attempts to pull a Chevrolet Beretta onto its flatbed in Jefferson County, Wednesday. Divers from Illinois had battled zebra mussels, Mother Nature and Father Time to find the vehicle that disappeared seven years ago along with its owner, East Liverpool resident Charles Fluharty. -- Contributed/Chaos Divers

WELLSVILLE — An elderly East Liverpool man who disappeared seven years ago is presumed dead after his vehicle was recovered from a Yellow Creek-area waterway Wednesday.

Divers had responded to the city’s Broadway Wharf last week to assist the group Adventures With Purposes search for Charles “Chuck” Fluharty around the seven-year anniversary of his disappearance. While AWP had to move on to its next case in Pittsburgh on its road trip, two other divers from Chaos Divers decided to stay behind and keep looking for the missing man.

Divers Jacob Grubbs and Eric Bussick recovered a black Chevy Beretta bearing Fluharty’s license plate in the Yellow Creek area around 10 miles from the Broadway Wharf along the Ohio River.

After the submerged car was towed to shore by First Class Towing, a body was found in the driver’s seat who also was an amputee as Fluharty was, according to East Liverpool police Capt. Darin Morgan.

Morgan was on hand as was Greg Smith, who initially had been assigned the case with East Liverpool in 2014.

Now a detective with St. Clair Township, Smith initially was told about the AWP and Chaos diving efforts to clean up the environment by removing vehicles from the waterways and solve cold cases. He contacted them regarding the Fluharty case.

On Oct. 19, 2014, Fluharty’s sister, Donna Stemple, had reported her wheelchair-bound brother missing after he made alarming comments to a home health aide. Police went to Fluharty’s apartment at Riverview Towers and found him and his Chevrolet Beretta missing. The car’s license plate number 755XEL was noted in the report.

Fast forward to Wednesday, when divers battled zebra mussels to remove the license plate of the submerged Chevrolet Beretta found at the mouth of Yellow Creek in the Ohio River after sonar quickly picked up on it.

As Grubbs explained late Thursday in a phone interview from elsewhere in Ohio, as he packed his gear to head to Chaos’ next stop three hours away in Tennessee, the zebra mussels are sharp and cause cuts when divers are feeling around underwater.

“They are an invasive species and feed off the algae and cover the paint and the car, underwater,” he explained.

The Chaos divers joined their AWP colleagues on livestream to recap the Fluharty mission for their followers, including explaining how it took around five to six hours for First Class Towing to remove it from the water as they battled the silt.

Saline Township EMS removed the body and took it to the Jefferson County morgue, where they are confident that Fluharty’s family will get closure.

According to Morgan, he has forwarded a DNA sample for a relative to Jefferson County, so it can be sent along to confirm the identity by the state Bureau of Criminal Investigation. No foul play appears to be suspected.

Dive teams like ADP from Oregon and Chaos from Illinois are part of a new movement committed to solving those cold cases and removing potential environmental hazards, like vehicles corroding in waterways.

In 2014, the Houston Chronicle focused on a Texas team who claimed to have evidence of more than 127 cars submerged in that city’s bayous, some of which could contain the bodies of missing persons. In that piece, the search and rescue nonprofit alleged they were told to keep quiet about it as the city lacks the funds and resources to deal with the sunken vehicles.

So, this is not a problem isolated to the Ohio Valley, where AWP and Chaos found nine vehicles and a boat during their work here in areas between the Jennings-Randolph Bridge, Broadway Wharf and the mouth of the Yellow Creek.

Both area detectives were impressed by the efforts of the dive teams, much of which is chronicled on their social media presences and their commitments to assisting law enforcement when many people are shying away from getting involved.

They concluded by expressing appreciation for all the agencies involved, including the Calcutta Volunteer Fire Department and Hancock County Sheriff, whose jurisdiction initially they thought it may be. No one refused to lend a hand, Smith said.

Grubbs said that Chaos divers aren’t done here yet and hope to be back pulling those vehicles from the waterways in the East Liverpool area. ”

We want to help this movement,” he said before noting that 13 people have been recovered as of Thursday.

Unlike popular belief, the divers aren’t here to showboat but to help and clean up the environment and assist law enforcement with their efforts. Grubbs concluded that now law enforcement officials have their contact information if they ever need assistance again.

For information regarding Chaos divers, which is completely reliant on donations, visit www.chaosdivers.com.