Dixon police are actively searching the Rock River for an individual who jumped from the Peoria Avenue bridge shortly before midnight.

Dixon Police Chief Ryan Bivins told Shaw Local that an officer was attempting to make contact with two individuals who were walking on the bridge when one of them jumped into the river. Police have not seen the individual since and now are treating the search as a recovery mission.

The situation started Monday night at a Casey’s gas station in Dixon, where two individuals were causing issues, and an officer approached them, Bivins said.

The officer later realized the individuals had given them false names and was continuing on with their patrol shift when they spotted the individuals walking across the bridge. The officer began pulling up in their squad car when one individual ran north and the other jumped, Bivins said.

“The officer wasn’t even out of their squad car, and they just jumped off the bridge,” Bivins said. “They weren’t in trouble. It was just gonna be, ‘Hey, what’s your name?’ ”

Bivins said police have identified the person who jumped and their age, but weren’t able to release that information at this time. He said he will be sending out a news release later today.

“We’re combing every inch of the river here. Our hope is, obviously, that they made it out, but we’re still treating it as a recovery at this point,” Bivins said. “The water temperature is 58 degrees, and we didn’t ever see them come up.”

The Dixon police are being assisted by several area fire departments, which are taking the lead on the river search, including Dixon City, Dixon Rural, Rock Falls, Sterling, Oregon, Byron and a search and rescue group from Ohio, Illinois.

“They do a really good job. They’re very methodical,” Bivins said. Some sections of the river are eight to 10 feet deep,“ and obviously the visibility is about zero.”

“They follow the channel’s deeper parts, and then they use their sonar to kind of go back and forth. They also drag the bottom just to see if there’s anything there,” Bivins said.

The focus of the search has been between the Peoria Avenue bridge and the pedestrian bridge being built that runs across the river from around South Lincoln Avenue to Page Drive near Dixon High School.

Police are asking the public to avoid the bridge and the surrounding area as much as possible while search efforts continue.