No remains found in bag recovered from Mississippi River The Hawk Eye Burlington Police and Fire departments responded Sunday evening to a report of possible remains discovered in the Mississippi River, but the investigation yielded only sand and construction materials. According to Bruce Workman, battalion chief of the Burlington Fire Department, and several witnesses at the scene, a fisherman was walking in the water near to shoreline just south of the Burlington Memorial Auditorium alongside the flood wall at about 3:30 or 4 p.m. when he fabric like bag. He was unable to remove the bag, which he described as being weighted down, from the water, but upon feeling inside of it, he found a Blackberry-type cellphone and felt something he described as feeling like a skull. He threw the cellphone up onto the flood wall platform.