RCMP continue to search Harrison Lake for teen's body
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Updated: July 08, 2009 1:08 PM
RCMP were still busy searching for the body of 19-year-old in the Harrison Lake Lagoon on Tuesday afternoon.
The young man drowned on Sunday, at about 2:30 p.m., after trying to cross the lagoon with a friend. Neither of the teens were strong swimmers, Sgt. Mike McCarthy says.
A side-scanning sonar was brought in on Monday morning by RCMP divers to search for the teen, who is presumed drowned.
The unidentified teen was swimming with a friend across the lagoon in front of the beach at Harrison Hot Springs. The pair had made it about 75 metres across the 150-metre lagoon, when one of them got into trouble, panicked and drowned. The other teen made it back to shore.
“The lagoon is 20-feet deep in the middle and the bottom six feet is weeds,” Agassiz search and rescue volunteer Neil Brewer said Monday, explaining why the search is taking so long.
RCMP divers used traditional search methods Sunday after the drowning was reported, but called for the $60,000 sonar unit to continue the search Monday.
McCarthy wasn't sure at press time how long the search will continue, in the event that the body is not quickly recovered.
"We're still digging around, and there's been no change since yesterday," he says. "They are trying a few different things."
He couldn't say whether the search would be called off at some point.
"There are bodies that go missing in larger lakes, (and are left there)," he says. "This is such a small body of water."
While RCMP had not released the victim's name at press time, McCarthy says the coronor and Victim Services has been in touch with his grieving family since Sunday.
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