A volunteer diving team on a mission to find missing individuals has stumbled upon a potential hidden truth. Beneath the surface of a lake close to Miami’s airport, the group has discovered numerous sunken cars that they suspect might be linked to unlawful activities.
Recently highlighted by WSVN 7 Miami, a collective of volunteer divers from various organizations searches bodies of water to assist with missing persons cases. These divers utilize a database spanning 40 years of missing person reports to identify lakes worthy of investigation.
They then employ sonar technology to determine if further exploration is warranted. Their journey to Florida was triggered by a cold case involving a person who vanished en route to Miami International Airport, leading them to a nearby lake.
Ken Fleming from Recon Dive Recovery explained to WSVN, “We have a case where someone drove from Pinellas County down to pick up their relatives at the airport, and then they disappeared. So, in this spot, we’re near the airport, it’s a large body of water, it has easy access to get into, so we would target that as a potential foul play spot.”
Upon diving beneath the surface, Fleming and his team encountered more than they anticipated: a total of 32 vehicles. This discovery accounts for over half of the 60 vehicles they’ve found throughout the rest of the state, and they suspect a connection to criminal activity.
Fleming stated, “When we discover a spot like this with multiple vehicles, it pretty much indicates that there’s a crime where they’re disposing of the vehicles and hiding them from law enforcement.”
The underwater footage doesn’t clearly indicate the era these cars are from, as many are overturned or covered in years of sediment. It’s likely that many, if not all, of them are related to instances of insurance fraud or stolen vehicles, disposed of to erase evidence.
However, there’s a possibility that some were submerged accidentally or intentionally (perhaps with unusual motives), which is why the divers are aiding in recovery by marking the locations of the vehicles with buoys.
Doug Bishop from United Search Corps explained, “It’s about providing answers for families where they don’t have them. Departments, in a respectful manner, need to justify their resource usage, and when a case goes cold, we have the capability to step in.
We aren’t required to justify our use of resources, and we can help alleviate the burden on local personnel. We are capable of doing this—we specialize in it, we can execute it at a high level, and we do so as volunteers.”
