FAIRFIELD – The active search for a Skowhegan woman presumed killed Saturday night when her vehicle launched into Martin Stream was suspended late Sunday afternoon.

Relatives of Cora Marley, 62, had waited Sunday near a bridge alongside Route 201 as Maine State Police divers searched the water and a Maine Warden Service pilot flew overhead.

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Maine State Police divers search Martin Stream near the Kennebec River off Route 201 in Hinckley on Sunday for the body of a woman driver whose vehicle left the road and launched into the stream late Saturday evening in Fairfield. David Leaming/Morning Sentinel

Fairfield police Sgt. Matthew Bard said a warden pilot will fly over the area again today, weather permitting, but it is not likely that divers will return to the stream that flows into the Kennebec River.

Bard said divers had searched the entire inlet area Saturday night and Sunday and had not found Marley’s body.

Visibility was less than one foot in the water, which is 18 to 20 feet deep around the bridge, Bard said.

Ken Gagnon of Waterville said Marley, his sister, was driving from Waterville to Skowhegan when the single-vehicle accident occurred about 8:35 p.m. near the Maine Academy of Natural Sciences on the Good Will-Hinckley campus.

He said two witnesses reported that Marley was erratically driving her 2004 Pontiac Vibe before the incident.

Bard said a couple from Canada had been traveling north behind Marley for several miles on Route 201. They told police they did not see the Pontiac ‘s brake lights activated when the vehicle veered off the road.

Gagnon, a former state senator from Waterville, said his sister took medication for diabetes.

Bard said Marley’s car launched off an embankment beside the bridge and traveled about 60 feet over the stream before it struck an abutment on the opposite embankment and then dropped into the water.

Both the front windshield and back window were missing from the Pontiac when it was pulled from the water late Saturday evening, Bard said.

Gagnon, director of media resources at Colby College in Waterville, said Marley has an identical twin sister, Dora, as well an older sister, Earlene, and brothers Earl and Richard. Their mother, Lorraine, is 90 years old, he said.

Gagnon referred to Cora and Dora as “two peas in a pod” who were known locally for Spic & Span, the cleaning business they used to own.

Fairfield police, ambulances and fire units from Fairfield, Skowhegan and Waterville assisted at the scene Saturday night, according to the Somerset County dispatch log.

Bard said emergency personnel were on the scene until 1 a.m. Sunday, then returned to the site Sunday from 7 a.m. until 4:30 p.m.

Morning Sentinel Staff Writer Beth Staples can be contacted at 861-9252 or at:

bstaples@centralmaine.com

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