NEW Now you can listen to Fox News articles! MARSH HARBOUR, Bahamas – EXCLUSIVE: An overnight security guard at a boatyard on a Bahamian island came across American Brian Hooker after he washed ashore roughly eight hours following his wife’s disappearance into a dark, stormy sea last weekend. Edward Smith, employed at Marsh Harbour Boatyards—a boat storage and repair site in the tourist spot—was notified by a colleague that a man had staggered onto the premises, muttering about a key and a woman. The individual was 58-year-old Hooker, now detained in a Freeport, Bahamas jail, who claimed his wife, Lynette Hooker, fell from their dinghy as they motored back to their yacht from a bar in Hope Town. DAUGHTER OF MISSING AMERICAN WOMAN IN BAHAMAS CITES ‘PRIOR ISSUES,’ URGES COMPLETE PROBE. On Saturday, April 4, Hooker and his wife were eating and drinking at the Abaco Inn—a restaurant in Hope Town, known locally as “Elbow Cay”—several miles by sea from the small, jagged-rock beach where he came ashore in Marsh Harbour. “He said he was on a cay, like at a bar, having something to eat or drink, and they came out to go to another place or back to their boat, but somehow they got out in the rough weather, and they had that incident, the lady [went] overboard, or whatever,” Smith told Fox News Digital on Saturday. Smith declined to be video recorded or photographed. Hooker was arrested for questioning as police investigate Lynette’s disappearance. He informed police that the seas were rough shortly after sundown as the pair tried to return to their yacht, and Lynette fell overboard with the dinghy’s key in her pocket, which cut off the engine. For the next several hours, Hooker drifted and paddled the dinghy, eventually reaching the boatyard’s shore around 4 a.m. The following day… “He drifted from that moment until he arrived here,” Smith said. HUSBAND OF AMERICAN WOMAN MISSING IN THE BAHAMAS SPEAKS OUT FOR FIRST TIME, SAYS HE IS ‘HEARTBROKEN’. No charges have been filed against Hooker by police, and he insists Lynette’s falling overboard was accidental. On Wednesday, he was taken into custody and transferred to Freeport, a distinct island in the Bahamas.
