AUGUSTA — Augusta police have identified the woman who sank in an area of open water on the mostly frozen Kennebec River early Saturday afternoon as Kelly Voytasko, 54, of Augusta.

Jared Mills, deputy chief of the Augusta Police Department, said the woman’s family reported her missing shortly after the incident.

Wardens on an airboat search the Kennebec River for a woman who disappeared under the ice between the Calumet Bridge at Old Fort Western and the railroad trestle on Saturday in Augusta. Joe Phelan/Kennebec Journal

“Based on the totality of the circumstances, there is a high probability that she is the person we are looking for,” Mills said in a news release issued just after 3 p.m Monday. “Kelly is an active missing person at this point and if anyone has any information in regards to our investigation, they are encouraged to contact Officer Paul Doody at 626-2370.”

Mills said recovery efforts have been suspended until conditions improve on the Kennebec River. Dangerous conditions on the mostly ice-covered river forced a suspension of the search.

Two women who watched the events from the nearby Kennebec Plaza apartments said it appeared the woman was talking on a cellphone. They said she put the cellphone on the ice and then stepped or jumped into the open water, clinging briefly to the ice.

They watched as police threw a roped buoy to her, but they said it looked as though she pushed it away. Police recovered an item the woman left on the ice, but it was not a cellphone and did not help to identify her, Mills said. Mills did not specify what the recovered item was.

Police and firefighters as well as officers with the Maine Marine Patrol and wardens from the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries & Wildlife, responded to help search for her, but their efforts were in vain.

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