Quarry dive reveals no bodies

By Jerry Sena

jtsena@wataugademocrat.com

Seven divers spent two hours just outside Mountain City, Tenn.  on Wednesday afternoon, searching the 70-foot depths of a flooded limestone quarry. They located a submerged highway barrier, but ultimately found no clue of the whereabouts of 23-year-old Jade Chambers.

Chambers has left no trace since Feb. 10 when she was seen climbing into a car, possibly  with a Mountain City man.

Since then, investigators said, Chambers’ bank accounts have been quiet. Her public-assistance checks have gone untouched. And no one in her family has heard from her.

When her mother, Sheila Chambers, told Boone dive shop owner Mitch Pardue she was afraid her daughter’s body may have been discarded in the quarry’s waters, he volunteered to organize a dive.

Six more divers accompanied Pardue – brothers Bill and Jimmy Barker, Tim Inman, Steve Loflin, David Alderson, and Drew McKee – all from Boone and Blowing Rock — ready to brave the darkness, cold, and slim-but-chilling possibility they might uncover what they’d come there to find.

No bodies emerged — all they found was a highway barrier someone had thrown over the edge of the quarry.

Just about every attempt at finding Jade Chambers has run into a dead end in one way or another. 

Johnson County Sheriff Mike Reece said there are no suspects in Chambers’ disappearance, because he isn’t convinced she’s the victim of a crime. And like everybody else involved in Wednesday’s search, he had mixed emotions about the results.

“We’re right back where we started,” he said as the divers packed up their gear and prepared to make the drive back to Boone.

“We’ve followed a lot of leads,” he said. “We’ve got a couple of guys we’re looking at. But we’re looking at this as a missing-person case right now.”

Sheila Chambers heard rumors her daughter may have been murdered and dumped into the water, prompting the dive.

Leon Bryant, the quarry superintendent for Maymead, Inc., said the area is a magnet for stolen cars, meth labs and swimmers who breach the six-foot chain link fence that surrounds the pool to dive off its 30-foot rock face and sun on its edge.

A public road runs right by the flooded quarry, Bryant said, making it impossible to block it off from public access.

Reece said his office would continue to look for clues to what happened to Jade Chambers and welcomed calls from anyone who might know what happened to her.

She was last seen Feb. 10 wearing a green, knee-length jacket, blue jeans and gray shoes.

A friend reportedly dropped her off at a Slabtown Road residence at around 3 p.m. Later she got into a vehicle with another man and left to go to his residence at 235 Murphy St., in Mountain City.

That was the last time anyone reported seeing her.

The telephone number for the Johnson County Sheriff’s Office is 423-727-7761.