David Seymour entered the lake to retrieve an item as he headed back toward Hartwell Marina on June 20, and the 73-year-old was unable to get back onto his vessel before disappearing beneath the surface of Lake Hartwell. Nearly two months would pass before anyone found him.
According to CBS News Atlanta, Hart County 911 responders received a call about a possible drowning near the Mega Ramp in Gum Branch on June 20, the same day Seymour had been out on the water after visiting Big Oaks Recreation Area. Hart County Sheriff Chris Carroll wrote on Facebook that day that the county's dispatchers had taken the call. Game wardens and emergency personnel responded and searched using boat-mounted sonar and underwater drones, but they could not locate Seymour, according to the outlet's report.
The search dragged on for weeks across a stretch of lakebed that made recovery difficult. Search teams cited by 92.1 WLHR described the area between Ridge Road point and the Gum Branch Mega Ramp as approximately 100 feet deep, with a submerged bottom forest of standing dead timber reaching 60 feet tall. That drowned timber made Seymour difficult to locate.
Volunteer Divers Take Over the Search
With conventional resources exhausted, the case eventually fell to Bruce's Legacy, a Wisconsin-based nonprofit dedicated to bringing closure to families affected by drownings. Founder Keith Cormican started the organization in 2013 in memory of his brother Bruce, a firefighter who drowned during a 1995 rescue mission in Wisconsin, and built it around specialized side-scan sonar and remotely operated underwater vehicles, according to MeatEater Fishing. Cormican told CBS News Atlanta the terrain was difficult to search through, a comment that lines up with the sunken forest and extreme depths described by searchers.
Bruce's Legacy volunteers spent five days combing the lake before locating a body early Saturday evening in 88 feet of water, per CBS News Atlanta's report. The Hart County Sheriff's Office statement, as relayed by 92.1 WLHR, put the discovery at roughly 9 p.m. on August 15 before the remains were transferred to the Hart County Coroner's Office for formal identification. CBS News Atlanta reported that the recovery mission helped give Seymour's family some closure nearly two months after he vanished.
A Reservoir Built for Depth and Danger
Lake Hartwell is a reservoir built by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers along the Savannah River basin, according to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. Big Oaks Recreation Area, where Seymour had been boating before the accident, is a 12-acre day-use site the Corps operates year-round in Hart County, complete with a two-lane boat ramp and courtesy dock roughly a mile from Hartwell Dam. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Savannah District says Hartwell Lake was built between 1955 and 1963. According to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Savannah District, Hartwell Lake has 962 miles of shoreline.
Outside expertise like Cormican's can be valuable in this kind of search. Specialized volunteer teams can help in difficult recovery efforts.
A Pattern Across Georgia's Lakes
Seymour's death highlights the importance of boating safety in Georgia, as discussed by 11Alive.com. General information about Georgia boating laws is available from the Lake Lanier Association. According to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, each year, needless injuries and deaths occur as a result of swimming and boating related accidents, most of which are preventable.
Seymour's recovery underscores how searches in deep reservoirs can be drawn out and how families may depend on specialized volunteer teams to bring a missing loved one home from the bottom of a lake.
