Walworth county, Wisconsin – The bodies of 2 drowned men were found on Sunday morning in Lake Beulah Wisconsin after their canoe overturned, other 2 men maintain missing.
Their friends reported they were staying at a house on Lake Beulah and went outside during a party around 2:30 a.m. Sunday to smoke cigarettes but never came back. The authorities believe the 4 victims stole the three-man boat without life jackets in the middle of a drunken cabin party.
At the next morning, their friends noticed their beds were empty and that a 14-foot canoe was also missing. Jason Roberts, a warden for the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources said the victim’s friends had walked on to the boathouse, noticed that the canoe was gone, that they had seen some tracks on the edge of the ice and when they looked out into the lake they saw an overturned canoe.
The search for the 4 missing men began immediately after their friends notified the police. 2 bodies were recovered using sonar technology around 8:00 PM, but the search had to be suspended due to the temperature of the water. Victims were only identified as Illinois residents between the ages 20 to 23.
“Obviously, the circumstances of the water temperature and the time that they may have gone in the water precluded any rescue. If we get one or two cold nights, the whole lake will freeze over. That’s how cold the water is. It’s dangerous to be on the water at night. It’s dangerous to be on the water when it’s really cold, so you combine any of those, and it leads to a very tragic situation,” East Troy Police Chief Jim Surges said.
Divers resumed the search on Monday morning but the temperature of the water remains an issue. Roberts said the divers will rotate in and out of the water as they continue the search for the other two men.
Source: CBS Chicago