Tiara Watson is alive thanks to Wesley Storz and the hard work of Sam Kennedy and David Beckham

David Beckham and Sam Kennedy are the Delta Marshals who were quick to respond when they learned Tiara Watson had abandoned her vehicle. Call it instinct, good police sense, or just common sense. Many of these situations end up with the vehicle being towed and little else happening. If that were the case, the Tiara Watson story would be very different.

The entire Mississippi Delta area was concerned after it was reported a person had abandoned their vehicle in the small city of Delta, Louisiana. Delta has a small police force and is a town where everyone knows everyone.

At 8:03 a.m. Tiara Watson got out of her car on St. Landry Street, next to a plowed field in Delta, Louisiana.

Watson’s car was found abandoned by an alert neighbor, Wesley Storz, Thursday morning. “Something just didn’t look right,” said Storz, “There’s never anyone parked there and when I got there and saw it running I thought something might be up.” Delta Marshal Sam Kennedy was the first on the scene and quickly assessed that something was not right about the situation. He called in Beckham and they called in the Sheriff’s Office.

Pretty soon the Louisiana State Police were involved and a search plane was sent to scan the area. From the evidence gathered later, it was known that she walked around the block, made a straight line for the levee near Janice street, and that is the last anyone saw of her.

Bridge Commissioner Herman Smith later provided video evidence that Tiara had been on the levee and then went into the woods that adjoin the sandbars on the Louisiana side of the Mississippi River. He watched a lot of surveillance camera footage and said he never saw her come out.

Kennedy and Beckham, along with the Madison Parish SO and the Louisiana State Police searched the area where she went in and found nothing. They continued the search until 11 p.m., 15 hours after Watson first abandoned her car.

The next morning it was decided to call in the search and rescue boat operated by the Warren County Sheriff’s Office.

Beckham and Kennedy stayed at it all day and night. They searched video camera footage and pieced together her most likely path. On Friday morning at around 11:30 a.m., after just a couple of hours sleep by either Beckham or Kennedy, Warren County Sheriff Pace arrived in Delta. Pace told the assembled law enforcement that Warren County would have their boat in the water soon, piloted by Sam Winchester. Beckham got on the boat and they began the process of searching the shore, it was just after 12:00 in the afternoon.

By 12:45 they were in the river and began searching the shoreline for Watson while teams from the Louisiana State Police, the Madison Parish Sheriff’s Office, the Warren County Sheriff’s Office and the Delta Marshals were on the ground on side-by-sides and 4-wheelers scouring the area. Within an hour she was spotted.

At 1:21 p.m. a call came across the radio by Winchester saying they saw her. She was about 100 yards north of the old Highway 80 bridge, on the Louisiana side. Winchester said, “We’re talking to her.” Radio chatter for the next 20 minutes or so was law enforcement getting to her location and helping her to safely get from the wooded area to an ambulance at the Delta Fire Station.

Sheriff Martin Pace explained, “Detective Sam Winchester, who is my lead boat pilot, was able to spot her from the river and made initial contact and then we were able to extract her from the land side.”

Both Beckham and Kennedy are quick to share the glory with the Madison Parish Sheriff’s Office, the Louisiana State Police, the Warren County Sheriff’s Office, alert neighbor Wesley Storz and anyone who helped find Tiara Watson. But the reality is Tiara Watson would still be lost and in great danger of perishing in the waters of the Mississippi if it wasn’t for Beckham and Kennedy.

Watson looked fine considering she was in the woods for 29 hours and was in good spirits and cooperative with the lawmen there. They spoke to her with great kindness and respect while guiding her to the ambulance. Whatever event led to Watson being lost in the woods is yet to be determined. What we can say is she will be reunited with her family with only a few scrapes on her thanks to good people like Wesley Storz, Sam Kennedy and David Beckham along with a little help from their friends.

There are a lot of ifs involved here. If Storz had ignored the vehicle and not made the report, Watson’s vehicle would have soon run out of gas and been just another abandoned vehicle. If Kennedy had not picked up the indicators that this abandoned vehicle was different, then Watson may have never been found.

Unbeknownst to anyone, Watson was most likely already in the wooded area near the Mississippi River and out of sight around the time her vehicle was found. That side of the levee in Delta is thick woods and it is swampy this time of year. Someone could be 50 feet from you but you wouldn’t be able to see them through the brush.

All three of the men, Storz, Beckham, and Kennedy are humble. Kennedy and Beckham do their work without the expectation of any reward other than doing their jobs, but this time they deserve that recognition and praise.