13-year-old Shayn Wolffarth, went missing at Silver Lake Beach on Sunday, June 17 while on his inner tube. At 6:00 p.m. it was reported the boy’s inner tube was found, with no sign of Wolffarth. When officers arrived on scene, they found multiple people in the water attempting to find him.
Local dive teams worked hard for three days to locate Shayn. The DNR came in with their ROV/Sonar, Milwaukee PD brought their Kongsberg sector scan sonar and Dane County Medical Examiner’s Office brought in a cadaver K9.
The family contacted us on day 2 of the operation and I told them that we would need to be called in by officials to aid in the search and that I would be able to come when that happens. By the end of day three, we had many local residents sending us messages for our assistance. I replied to each one explaining that we would need to be requested by the local agency- or when local agencies discontinue their search, we would be able to come.
On the morning of day four, I received a call from Portage PD requesting our assistance. Beth and I arrived and on the water around 11 am after a briefing from the local agencies. We ran our Klein 3900 sonar for a while and collected some targets to check with our ROV with no luck. The family had been gathered on the shoreline every since this happened. We decided to go talk with them to see what they could tell us. Beth and I felt they were adamant about his location. So, they were placed at the location which they were at, exactly when the saw Shayn last and directed us to that location- by hand signals to our boat. We then put our Outland ROV that is equipped with the Gemini 720ik sonar. I immediately picked up an image of interest on the sonar. We had located this little boy in 28’ of water. With our ROV manipulator were able to secure him and bring him to the surface. The Portage Fire Dept was then called in to aid in this recovery.
Our sincere and heartfelt condolences go out to this family. When accidents like this happen, it is very hard to imagine how hard this is on the family. But when it is someone’s child it is most difficult to deal with.