The arrested husband of missing American boater Lynette Hooker is still hopeful she’ll be found — and was trying to get back out to sea for his own search because he is “hopeless without her,” his lawyer said.
Brian Hooker, 59, was taken into custody late Wednesday as a suspect in his 55-year-old wife’s disappearance after first reporting that she was swept away in rough seas when she fell from their dinghy during a sailing trip off the coast of the Bahamas over the weekend.
As the search neared the week-long mark, his lawyer Terrel Butler said Hooker was still “hopeful” rescue crews could locate his wife.
“He feels hopeless without her, so he is hoping that she will be recovered,” the lawyer told Fox News’ “Fox & Friends” on Friday.
“He’s been married for 25 years. She’s his life partner. He says they share everything together.”
Hooker, who was nabbed in Abaco on Wednesday and is being questioned by cops, has denied any involvement in his wife’s disappearance.
Authorities have been searching for Lynette ever since her husband reported that she had fallen into the water and was swept away by powerful currents as they were returning in a dinghy to their yacht, Soulmate, on Saturday.
Hooker claimed his wife had the boat key on her when she went overboard, causing the engine to cut off and forcing him to paddle back to the marina.
His lawyer said the husband had been planning to go out searching himself when cops took him into custody.
“The day that he was questioned by the police, he had actually paid someone to assist him to take him out there so that he could continue his search,” the lawyer said.
“So while I interviewed him last night, while he was in custody at the central police station in Grand Bahama, that was his main concern.”
Hooker was taken into custody after Lynette’s daughter from a previous relationship raised the alarm about prior domestic violence allegations.
Here’s the latest on Lynette Hooker, the US woman who vanished after falling off a boat in the Bahamas
“I do believe something might have happened to her,” the daughter, Karli Aylesworth, previously told Fox News.
“There’s history of him choking her out and threatening to throw her overboard. So the fact that this is actually happening makes me believe there’s more to the story.”
An arrest report from 2015 showed Lynette was briefly detained after getting into a physical fight with her husband at their Kentwood, Michigan, home.
Her husband was drunk and had blood pouring from his nose when officers arrived, according to the arrest report.
At the time, the husband alleged his wife — who he claimed was also drunk — had punched him four to five times in the face during the altercation.
But Lynette told officers her husband had hit her in the forehead before allegedly choking and punching her once.
She ended up being arrested but the warrant was eventually dismissed because there was “insufficient evidence as to who started the assault.”
