Update: It was Carter who first spotted the body. See details below
Wonder Woman star Lynda Carter, 56, was most likely in a rowboat on the Potamac River in Washington, DC on Wednesday when she called 911 to report a body floating in the river. Many outlets are reporting that Carter was canoeing, but it sounds like she was in a rowboat and is the person who called for emergency services, not the first person who spotted the body. Local ABC 7 News reports that a person in a canoe flagged down other boats, which called 911. It’s a little confusing, but since they say she was out of a rowing club and was rowing, it makes sense that she was in a rowboat, not a canoe:
“Middle-aged woman was found floating in the water about a quarter mile north of three sisters island. She was found by a canoer. The canoer flagged down some boats and they called Fire and EMS,” said D.C. Fire and EMS spokesperson Scott Kane.
Sources told ABC 7 News, former television star, actress Lynda Carter, of ‘Wonder Woman” fame, called 911 after seeing Johnstone’s body floating north of the 3500 block of Water Street.
Carter had been out on the water rowing when it happened, but left the private Potomac boat club abruptly without giving comment.
[From WJLA.com]
The victim is identified as 47 year-old DC resident Helen Johnstone. It is thought that she was hiking and fell into the river. She had car keys in her pocket and was wearing a backpack with a raincoat in it. An autopsy is pending. Our thoughts go out to the family. That must have been a shock to find a body and you wonder if Carter is going to avoid rowing for a while.
Lynda Carter is shown on 12/13/07 at the premiere of National Treasure: Book of Secrets, thanks to WENN.
Update The Associated Press reports that Carter was the first to spot the body, and that she was the person alone in a boat who called for help from other boats nearby. Earlier reports were confusing as to her role as we are sorry for reporting this incorrectly at first.
Lynda Carter tells The Washington Post she was alone in a boat when she saw the body Wednesday. She says she didn’t have a cell phone with her, so she yelled to some fishermen and asked them to call police. Carter waited until rescuers arrived and directed them to the body.
District of Columbia police say the body of 47-year-old Helen Johnstone of Washington was found floating on the river Wednesday. The medical examiner’s office has not declared an official cause of death.
Carter says she “did what anybody would have done.”
[From AP via News.Yahoo.com]
Man, that’s sad about the poor dead woman. It’s also sad that my first thought was, “Wonder Woman lives in Washington? How random.”
Holy crap!
Eeeewwwwww…….. that’s just too gross for words. Water bodies are simply disgusting. Poor thing 🙁
Linda still has the prettiest blue eyes I’ve ever seen in my life.
Lynda
How sad. But how do you drown while hiking? makes no sense. Poor woman.
Her first name is spelled ‘Lynda’ btw 🙂
Thanks – I have fixed the spelling of her name!
Hiking and fell into the river… What, was she blind??
I used to run a resort on the Meramec River in Missouri and I too, found a dead body floating in the river. I found it before the rescue divers found it. It was a lady who had a heart attack while floating down the river in an inner tube.
How horrible! My condolences.
For a northern Virginia political blogger, this is too much!
http://tooconservative.com/?p=2005
omg, i went on a class trip to washington d.c. and we went for a cruise on the potomic river the same time this insident occurred. isn’t that so scary.
may she rest in peace.
The stories keep chaning. Here is a near 60 year old woman, with NO protection or security, ZERO communication, out canoeing/rowing/row boating on the stormiest day ever recorded in DC HISTORY!(Goggle it yourself…body “discovered” at 1pm) Something really stinks about this story. (Can anyone else detect the smell of disinformation coming from the media to protect this well connected woman?) Her husband is a former top BCCI executive…..there is much more to this…….
Carter has made many previous statements that when she goes sculling she always goes with a friend or relative because “she enjoys the comradery”. Being a member of the VERY exclusive Potomac Boat Club is nice, especially since that is the EXACT spot where the body is now claiming to have been discovered and pulled out of the water. Except the media is now calling it “Jack’s Boathouse” to keep the fact that at the exact same spot is the Potomac Boat Club?! Helen Johnstone’s family are world renown boat builders and instructors who are members of the Potomac Boat Club where they knew Carter personally. Even though it was the worst day in DC history to go out boating, let alone by yourself without any form of communication even though all scullers have waterproof pouches with them to keep a cell phone…..did she find the body on the way out or the way in from sculling? The media did a great job keeping her name out of the report for a few days. Now all of a suddenly Carter is making dozens of statements since her name got in the press. Question….did she know this woman even though there is a clear connection she did? Ms. Johnstone was dress as if she were going out to meet someone? Even possibly to go rowing or sculling perhaps? No one in the media is questioning this story at all. Do your own research.
…..when the medics or divers arrived they performed CPR. That gives you an idea that they thought there was actually a chance to save this person. That means she had JUST died before being discovered. Ms. Johnstone also had forms of defense wounds on her. Why didn’t Carter try any form of CPR or bringing this person ashore? Instead she sat around waiting simply to point out the body?! Sounds like Vermont?
oops I meant Lynda…:lol:
linda;lynda same difference
Did she spin in to wonder woman and try saving the person, she would have to spin 2 times to get into the swimming suit outfit. Did someone see her spin?
I thought she was wonder woman
I am more impressed that Lynda Carter is sculling than with “Huh”s generalizations about scullers.
I rowed crew for years and sculled as well; single sculls are so low and lightweight and long and pointy that non-crew people often mistake them for kayaks (except the oars are all wrong!). Seldom canoes, that is just too weird, and “rowboat” implies something a lot roomier and less likely to tip over. It is VERY easy to overturn a single scull; all you have to do is get one oar stuck in the water at the release (when you finish the power part of the stroke and your hands are heading down your body toward your lap) and you are spitting out harbor or river water someplace unsanitary! Nobody I knew while sculling carried a “waterproof pouch with a cell phone.” For one thing, you’re in the middle of fairly strenuous exercise and should not be taking phone calls, for another, in water of that temperature if you go over you had better be either swimming or getting help from people who are on the river near you RIGHT NOW or you will be hypothermic in less than half an hour – actual number depends on your metabolic rate and your bodyfat percentage.
And please, don’t even think about trying to do CPR from a single scull!!! There would then be TWO bodies in the water.
Helen Johnstone was a sailboat racer, not a sculler. The Johnstones build JBoats, racing sailboats. Even though Choate has crew, Helen was not in crew but sailing. So please stop with the whacked conspiracy theories. She sounds like she would have been a cool person to know, and I love that her family has started a memorial (SAILING) regatta for her, but aside from the excellent fact that Lynda Carter is doing such a demanding sport at her age, there’s just no “there” there.
Finally, you certainly don’t try attacking anyone from a single scull! Try standing up even in a one-person kayak and waving your paddle around — now, shrink the width of the kayak down to 18 inches and make balancing on the outrigger-mounted oars integral to maintaining an upright boat, and what exactly are you going to use to attack anyone with??? Defense marks, my butt. If Helen slipped off a hiking trail she might have marks from trying to grab at rocks and shrubs on the way down — I have climbed around Carderock (slightly up the Potomac from DC), and there are plenty of park areas, including sections of recreational trail, that are RIGHT next to the Potomac all the way into the city, it’s a “greenbelt” thing, designed to sort of protect the watershed, for the little good it manages to do. If she jumped from a bridge, I have no idea where the “slight injuries” came from. As for the car keys and the silver bracelet watch, those do not sound like things I’d take rowing, “Huh,” I would leave anything that might be damaged by water in my locker at the boathouse, wouldn’t you? But whatever caused the “slight injuries,” it wasn’t a crazed AARP-qualified Wonder Woman with superhuman balance bashing at her with an eight-foot-long, four-pound sculling oar which she would have needed in the oarlock to keep her boat from going right over. Sigh.
Anyway, thanks for the details, I was wondering what had happened to Helen, and this was one of the sites with the most info.
Everyone is wise until he speaks.
i have wonder woman season 1 and wonder woman season 2 i want to get wonder woman season 3 for my birthday.