JOPLIN, Mo. — The search for the body of a Missouri girl — swept away while floating on Memorial Day — entered its fourth day on Thursday. 

The family of Brooke Robinson started out Wednesday with high hopes of finding the 12-year-old’s body in Shoal Creek, a mid-sized waterway popular with swimmers in this Southwest Missouri city. 

“The water’s lower, the sun’s out,” Brooke’s cousin Lindsey Hoke said in the morning. “The water clarity should be a go.”

Today’s the day, several family members said.

But Wednesday night, it appeared that a fourth day of searching was in store, despite new efforts by the Missouri State Highway Patrol. It had scanned the creek from above using a helicopter, flying low over the water.

Brooke was with her family Monday afternoon floating down Shoal Creek when she was hit by a tree branch and fell off of her float tube about 300 feet downstream from where they set off at Zan’s Creekside Campground, south of Joplin. The plan had been to float to family member Kristi Wade’s property, which was a little less than a mile downstream.

The day Brooke went missing, Wade had provided the floating group with a warning: Don’t go near the trees or the debris. 

Everyone was floating on an inner tube, except for Wade, and Brooke’s father, Jay Robinson, who shared a canoe. The tubes took off first, Wade said and minutes later, the canoe followed. About 300 feet past the campground, Wade said she came up on a couple of people who were searching around a tree.

“Then we realized Brooke’s mom is on the bank, screaming,” Wade said. “She had seen (Brooke) got knocked off.”

Recovery teams looked for Brooke after she fell in at about 2 p.m. until the fading light forced them to call it quits that day. 

A full day of searching Tuesday yielded no results, despite the team cutting through the root ball of a tree where they were confident the members would find her body. Teams searched downstream from Zan’s  and upstream from Schermerhorn Park in nearby Galena, Kansas.

Three of Brooke’s relatives, the Patrums, took off into the creek on kayaks, hoping to find her. 

Two of the Patrums, Aaron and Josh, along with other family members, had traveled all night from Cullman, Alabama, to help. In two and a half hours they reached the banks of Schermerhorn Park, but didn’t see Brooke. There were a lot of tree limbs in the water, Josh Patrum said.

“We are not going to quit,” Aaron Patrum said defiantly, pushing his wet red hair away from his face.

On Wednesday, the state patrol’s water division brought its bigger boat and sonar equipment. Several area fire departments continued to cut up underwater trees and roots with chain saws.

“Any place they find a possible location, they will cut any of the wood away to gain access,” said Newton County Sheriff Chris Jennings.

Thunder and lightning during the afternoon and evening Wednesday forced the teams to stop searching for some time. As of 9 p.m. Wednesday,  the search largely was suspended for the night. But three boats equipped with powerful lights were going to continue searching through the night, Wade said. 

Jennings said he doubted the team would use the state helicopter for a second day. The plan for today is to continue looking downstream for possible locations of her body, he added.

Thomas writes for the Joplin, Missouri Globe.