Arkansas man, teenage son among 17 killed when tourist boat sank in Missouri

A park ranger patrols an area Friday, July 20, 2018, near where a duck boat capsized the night before resulting in at least 13 deaths on Table Rock Lake in Branson, Mo. Workers were still searching for four people on the boat that were unaccounted for. (AP Photo/Charlie Riedel)
A park ranger patrols an area Friday, July 20, 2018, near where a duck boat capsized the night before resulting in at least 13 deaths on Table Rock Lake in Branson, Mo. Workers were still searching for four people on the boat that were unaccounted for. (AP Photo/Charlie Riedel)

An Arkansas man and his son are among the 17 people who died when a tourist boat capsized near Branson, Missouri.

Carroll Smith said in a telephone interview Friday that his 53-year-old son, Steve, and 15-year-old grandson, Lance, were killed when a Ride the Ducks boat sank amid churning waters Thursday on Table Rock Lake. The family is from Osceola.

Steve Smith's wife, Pamela, was with the family on the visit to Branson but did not go on the boat. Steve Smith's 14-year-old daughter, Loren, suffered a concussion but survived.

"It's a hard thing," Carroll Smith, said of losing his only child and his only grandson. "It's a very difficult day."

Carroll Smith says his son was a retired math teacher who loved old Westerns and was active in his church. Lance would have been a freshman at Osceola High School.

Seventeen of the 31 people onboard died when the amphibious passenger vehicle sank.

Nine of the dead were from the same Indianapolis family, said Thomas Griffith, suffragan bishop of Zion Tabernacle Apostolic Faith Church in Indianapolis. He didn't name them. Two people from the family survived, a spokesman for Missouri Gov. Mike Parson said.

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