ELLICOTT CITY, Md.  — Searchers scouring a river Tuesday that runs alongside a Maryland town found the body of a man last seen being swept away by flood waters. Volunteers and crews with trained dogs had been looking for 39-year-old Eddison Hermond who disappeared Sunday afternoon, following torrential rains that prompted destructive flash flooding in Ellicott City, Maryland.

On Tuesday afternoon, his body was located in the Patapsco River. He was the only person reported missing in Ellicott City.

“To have died helping somebody else is incredible. And I can’t even imagine the loss his family is suffering,” said Nicholas Johnson, owner of a store near the spot where Hermond vanished while trying to help a woman who had escaped through a window with her cat.

Hermond, of Severn, Maryland, was a veteran of the U.S. Air Force and a sergeant in the Maryland Army National Guard. He was described by those who knew him as an affable, generous man.