A team of divers who claim to have recovered the body and car of missing Californian teen Kiely Rodni say police told them not to bother looking in the area where they made the discovery.
On Sunday, the diving group Adventures With Purpose - which had been invited by police to join the search - said it had found an upturned vehicle about 14 feet underwater at Prosser Creek Reservoir, near to where the 16-year-old was last known to be.
In a press briefing on Monday about the discovery, the group added that the car was found just 55 feet from the shoreline of the reservoir and that the finding came within 30 minutes of a diver going into the look.
Josh Cantu, a spokesman for the diving group Adventures With Purpose, told the New York Post about the discovery on Sunday and said: “Police told us they did a rigorous search of this body of water. They gave us a grid map and made us confident we didn’t need to search here.”
Within minutes of the diving team entering the water however, the car and body were found, Mr Cantu said, with sonar radar technology allowing the team to look the sunken vehicle.
“I went down and did my inspection,” fellow diver Nick Rinn added in comments to the Post. “I saw the vehicle upside down, verified the license plate and that there were remains in the vehicle.”
He continued: “Then I came out, we called the family and authorities and let them take it from there.”
The finding by Adventures With Purpose came on the team’s third day of the volunteer search and rescue team’s efforts at the lake in northern California, where police have spent more than two weeks looking for Kiely.
Police say she disappeared from a party at a campground near the lake on 6 August, when her phone last pinged on the shore of Prosser Creek.
Over 90 members of law enforcement including detectives and investigators were assigned to the case at one point, before police scaled back the search for the missing teenager at the end of last week after nearly 20,000 man hours spent.
Officials are meanwhile yet to confirm if the car and body are those belonging to Kiely.
