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Search scaled back for 2 Grand Canyon swimmers

GRAND CANYON NATIONAL PARK — Grand Canyon National Park rangers have scaled back their search for two people who had attempted to swim across the Colorado River but were swept away.

The body of 16-year-old Mark Merrill was discovered last week. His brother, 22-year-old Joey Merrill, and 16-year-old Saif Savaya remained missing Monday.

Grand Canyon National Park spokeswoman Maureen Oltrogge says rangers will conduct a limited search until the bodies are found.

She says rangers will patrol the river and trails and enlist the help of commercial and private boaters.

A missing person’s flier is also being handed out to boaters and hikers along the river.

The missing people were on a trip sponsored by the Tri-City Baptist Church in Tempe.

Citizen Online Archive, 2006-2009

This archive contains all the stories that appeared on the Tucson Citizen's website from mid-2006 to June 1, 2009.

In 2010, a power surge fried a server that contained all of videos linked to dozens of stories in this archive. Also, a server that contained all of the databases for dozens of stories was accidentally erased, so all of those links are broken as well. However, all of the text and photos that accompanied some stories have been preserved.

For all of the stories that were archived by the Tucson Citizen newspaper's library in a digital archive between 1993 and 2009, go to Morgue Part 2

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