Body Recovered In Winona LakeWINONA LAKE - A body was recovered from Winona Lake late Tuesday morning in about 6 to 6-1/2 feet of water, according to Winona Lake Fire Department Public Information Officer Mike Cox.
After the man’s body was recovered by boat, he was offloaded to an ambulance and the county coroner was notified, Cox said.
Several 911 calls reported a man had walked into the lake at the south end of West Canal Street at around 9:30 a.m. The body was recovered shortly after 11 a.m.
Winona Lake Town Marshal Joe Hawn said they were not identifying the deceased at this point. The Indiana Department of Natural Resources is taking over the investigation and it will be up to them to release further information.
A witness said she saw the man and he had orange or reddish dyed hair. She said he was about 5 foot, 10 inches and looked to her to be late teens or early 20s. She heard him “raging” and he removed some of his clothing before sitting on the seawall for a bit before going into the lake. He left his personal items behind, according to Cox.
Asked what the key was to finding the man, Hawn said, “There was a witness statement that said they saw him getting into the water. So after the witness statement, then we brought the dive boats in to be able to find him with the sonar. And that’s what they eventually did - they found him basically right at the crest where it starts going down out there.”
The lake depth drops down to about 30 feet at that point, he said.
“He was right at that break level point,” Hawn said.
Asked if the drowning may have been a suicide, he said they do not know at this point.
Hawn said the fog was not a hindrance to recovering the body because it had lifted by that time, but initially the fog kept witnesses from seeing the man after he went past a certain point in the water.
The water condition was not a factor in the recovery, he said.
Agencies responding to the scene included the Warsaw-Wayne Fire Territory, Winona Lake Police and Fire, Kosciusko County Sheriff’s Office, IDNR, Lutheran EMS and Indiana State Police.
