As search went on, dozens of family and friends waited nearby hopefully.
A man's body was found about 1 p.m. Wednesday at Beaver Lake Nature Center. Rescue crews had been searching for Benjamin L. Hodgson, 25, of North Syracuse. He rented a canoe Tuesday afternoon and disappeared around 2:20 p.m. while swimming off the canoe on the west side of the lake. Lysander, NY -- New York State Police divers found Benjamin L. Hodgson today almost 22 hours after he slipped beneath the water while swimming alongside a canoe in Beaver Lake.
Divers found Hodgson, 25, of North Syracuse, floating along the bottom of the lake toward an area known as The Point. He was found at 12:42 p.m.
Throughout the day about two dozen friends and family waited in the 90-plus degree heat underneath a tree in front of the Beaver Lake Nature Center in Lysander awaiting news of their friend. The family has requested that friends not speak with the press about Hodgson, one man said.
The search for Hodgson was difficult, said state police divers, seated in the shade a little ways from the family.
The lake, which nature center Director Bruce Stebbins calls a “middle-aged pond,” is very silty. Swimming in the lake is prohibited, he said. The nature center is designed for education and recreation, swimming “is not part of our mission,” Stebbins said.
“There was no clearly defined bottom,” said Al Garcia, the state police’s Division Diving Officer. “There are not that many bodies of water like it.”
Normally divers are able to lay a mark on the bottom of a body of water and go on a line from that point to do an organized search, he said.
Beaver Lake had “zero visibility,” and divers instead relied on state police sonar brought from Rochester to find Hodgson, Garcia said.
The state police have a boat designed to use the sonar, but they couldn’t use it Wednesday because there is no boat access to the lake, he said. Instead, a small boat carrying three divers and the sonar moved methodically over the search zone marked by a triangle of orange buoys.
Divers read the sonar on a laptop computer, which they had to shade with a blanket so that they could see the screen in the sun’s glare, Garcia said. Because of the heat divers took turns under the blanket, he said.
An investigation into Hodgson’s death is continuing, said Investigator Gary Darstein. The victim had has some heart problems in the past, and an autopsy will be performed, he said.
Hodgson and a friend had rented a canoe on the lake. He was swimming alongside the canoe at about 2:20 p.m. Tuesday when he went under and didn’t come back up, Darstein said.
The lake averages 6 to 8 feet deep, and can go as deep as 12 to 13 feet, Stebbins said.
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