On March 1, my dive brother from down south, Buck Buchanan called and asked my availability for a case he was working on in Georgia. They were into day 22 and exhausted all their resources for the search for Gary Jones, of Atlanta Ga. Gary went missing in Lake Oconee on Feb. 8th when he and his fiance, Joycelyn Wilson went out in a small boat. Their boat was spotted by a local boater, spinning in circles. Joycelyn’s body was discovered the next morning floating on the surface by a local resident. She was deceased.
Myself and Bruce’s Legacy volunteer, Stuart Fryk started out on Thursday March 6th for the 18-hour road trip. We arrived Friday late afternoon and were greeted by a group of volunteers. They all jumped in and helped us set the boat up. We then put the boat in the water and went out to the search area to get better acquainted with the lake and put together our plan.
Saturday morning, we got on the water early and began our search in the deepest part of the lake. Late in the afternoon we got the sonar hung up in a tree and could not work it out. We called in the dive team that was on site in case this would happen. Buck suited up and in no time he had us free. We worked until dark and were able to cover all the deep channel.
Sunday morning, we got on the water and headed for the known “Underwater Forest.” We got caught up a couple of times in the trees, but were able to work ourselves free on our own. This area was proven to be very tough to cover. These trees came all the way near the surface and we were hitting the tree tops as we idle our way through towing the sonar. Then rain started in; it was forecast to rain all day. It was around 11 am when we got the image of what we believed to be Gary. We ran through the area many times, narrowing the area he was in. We then set up our trolling motor to hold us on that spot. We deployed our ROV, outfitted with lights, camera, and sonar. The target was Gary. I then called the sheriff to let him know of our findings. Come to find out, he was the on the County boat in the rain. I then called the family. We called the shore support team and we all worked together to bring Gary home.
This community was so supportive and we had the help from a lot of people to make this a joint successful outcome.
Special Thanks To:
Stuart Fryk – Bruce’s Legacy volunteer
Putnam County Sheriff’s Department – for keeping a boat near us to keep boaters away from us.
Georgia DNR – for keeping the boaters away from us.
Richard Pickering – of Emergency Dive Response Team – provided us with previous operation information and lined anything we needed for the search.
Buck Buchanan – Owner of Dive 911. Provided dive support.
Divers – Jonathan Godfrey & Eric Paracka
Pontoon Operator – Del Orr
Ronnie and Annette Frazier – for providing a dock for our boat and buying us diner.
Jeff and Kristy Evert – for buying our meal.
Johnny Moore – fixed our trailer light.
A local guy came in off the street and bought our breakfast when he seen our boat outside. Amazing!
