A 15-year-old Bowling Green boy drowned Saturday night as he tried to cross Barren River.

The body of Jesse Sean Ingram was discovered at 4:48 a.m. Sunday about 50 yards downstream from where he went under water, according to a Warren County Sheriff’s Office report.

Ingram was a Warren East High School freshman.

Ingram and two 16-year-old friends were attempting to cross the river to watch the AMRA Harley-Davidson Spring Rally & Drags at Beech Bend Raceway Park, according to the report. The incident was near the 1100 block of Plum Springs Road, where the boys had been trying to cross into the campground area.

Ingram slipped under water and did not resurface, according to the report.

The boys stated they began to try to cross the river around 8:30 p.m. Saturday, said Sgt. Maxie Jones of the sheriff’s office. The water temperature was about 41 degrees.

The area of the river where Ingram disappeared is about 11 feet deep, he said.

“There wasn’t anything there for him to get caught up on. That’s a pretty clean part of the river,” Jones said.

It is believed the hooded sweatshirt that Ingram was wearing could have been a contributing factor to the drowning, Jones said.

“When that hooded sweatshirt got wet, it added another 20 pounds or more to him,” he said. “When the water is that cold, it doesn’t take much for his muscles to give out.”

As the boys were swimming, one of them kept losing his shoe and Ingram would go down and get it and throw it forward, Jones said.

Ingram at one point was thrashing to stay above water and one of the other teens attempted to throw him a rope, Jones said.

“The juvenile couldn’t explain why he had the rope except to say ‘I thought I might need it,’ ” Jones said.

More than 14 agencies responded to reports of a person in the water Saturday night.

“This was a massive effort,” Jones said. “There were more than 100 people walking the edge of the river, hoping that he would pop up downstream.”

After about an hour, it was clear the effort was no longer a rescue effort but a recovery effort, he said.

A helicopter from Kentucky State Police from Elizabethtown was brought in that can detect body heat under the water, but was unable to locate Ingram, Jones said.

The rescue squads from Warren, Barren, Allen, and Hart counties were able to get five or six boats out on the river and once they started a full drag, Ingram was located within an hour, he said.

The last Barren River drowning in Warren County was in July 2005 at Weldon Peete Park.