The police search for answers to a cold case that started in Miami-Dade County on Sunday ended with more than 30 vehicles being retrieved from the lake’s bottom. Doug Bishop, the founder of United Search Corps, and diver Ken Fleming told 7 News Miami that when they suit up and searched the lake on Sunday, they were hoping to find a crucial clue in an unsolved disappearance. “We have a case where someone drove from Pinellas County down to pick up their relatives at the airport, and then they disappeared,” Fleming said.
The divers called Miami-Dade Police to report their discovery. After sending their own dive team, Public Information Officer Alvaro Zabaleta put the department’s estimate at just 20 cars, but said the precise number will be impossible to know until each vehicle is retrieved.
Zabaleta, who did not have the name of the lake, told Fox News Digital that they do not expect to dredge up any bodies or evidence of violent crime – but they will “do their due diligence because anything is possible.”
“Private investigators, their job is to put this thing out in a way where it’s beneficial to them. It’s because they hype it all up. I’m not sure if this is something [newsworthy],” he said on Wednesday.
However, police are hopeful that they will be able to solve more stolen vehicle cases after the first car pulled from the body of water – a 2002 Acura – had been reported stolen.
“We’re thinking the majority of these cars are going to come back to crime – whether they’re stolen, abandoned or [involved with] some sort of insurance fraud,” Zabaleta said.
All the submerged cars fished out thus far are 10- to 15-year-old “antiques,” he said – the others included a Ford Crown Victoria, an Econoline E-350 and a Cadillac DeVille.
When those cars first hit the water, Zabaleta told Fox, the whole area was a “desolate business district” – which “made it a perfect place to dump cars.”
Now, the area is built out, and the lake can only be accessed from one point behind a medical practice on Northwest 12th Terrace. The department’s dive team balanced a complicated operation that involved moving the cars within reach of a crane there using buoys, and could only pull four cars out in a six-hour period.