A Florida sonar search and recovery group discovered a car with several bodies inside it in a pond.
Sunshine State Sonar assists law enforcement agencies in recovering evidence, missing persons and vehicles by sending pulses of sound waves in water to create images, according to their website.
In one of their recent finds, they recovered a 1983 Oldsmobile from a retention pond in front of the Sawgrass Mills Mall near Fort Lauderdale, they wrote in a Facebook post.
The vehicle was found at around 11am on 6 January while teaming up with Adventures With Purpose, another diving group that locates missing persons.
The vehicle was submerged in 24 feet of water at the entrance of the mall parking lot.
It was recovered during the search for a missing woman called Libby Dibenedetton, who was last seen in 2000 in Sunrise, Florida.
The bodies are currently being identified by officials— (Courtesy of Sunshine Sonar State)
It is unclear how many people were found in the vehicle; the recovery team said it is an active and ongoing investigation, and they have no further information to release at this time.
“Our thoughts and prayers go out to the victims families,” they wrote in their post.
A Sunrise police spokesperson told USA Today that the department helped pull the vehicle from the pond.
The car found was last registered in 2005, but no further information is available on the bodies as they are being tested to help identify them.
Sunshine State Sonar has also helped recently recover the bodies of other missing people.
A missing Orlando mother named Sandra Lemire, who was missing for nearly 12 years, was found deceased in her vehicle that was submerged in a retention pond near Disney World, Florida on New Year’s Eve.
Last seen driving her grandmother’s minivan away from a Denny’s restaurant in Kissimmee around the time she met a man she had been communicating with on an online dating service, Lemire was never seen again, the recovery group wrote on their Facebook.
The team said they have been working with the Orlando Police Department for the past year and a half, searching a total of 63 bodies of water.
Sandra Lemire’s car and remains was found by the group on New Year’s Eve— ( Sunshine State Sonar via AP)
New information from the police prompted the group to search new locations, including some along the highway when they got a ping on their sonar in a small retention pond in 14 feet of water.
The medical examiner’s office in Orlando still needs to confirm the remains and the Florida Highway Patrol is investigating the cause of the crash, according to the Associated Press.
Her son, Timothy Lemire, told Spectrum News that he never lost hope at finding his mother.
“You just can’t lose hope, and I almost did,” Timothy Lemire said Tuesday. “But the Sunshine State Sonar did an amazing job solving this case. Without them, none of this would have been possible.”
