Mystery as Florida dive team finds 32 cars submerged in a lake on their mission to solve 40 missing persons cold cases
- Divers Ken Fleming and Doug Bishop said they came across the vehicles most likely dumped during criminal activity
- The volunteer divers are now working with Miami-Dade County to pull all vehicles out of the murky waters
Florida divers have discovered a total of 32 cars submerged in a lake that are believed to be linked to criminal cold cases.
Ken Fleming and Doug Bishop said they came across the vehicles, most likely dumped during criminal activity, in their effort to help solve missing persons in Doral, near Miami International Airport.
The volunteer divers are now working with Miami-Dade County to pull all vehicles out of the murky waters near Northwest 87th Avenue and 13th Terrace — before they begin investigating possible cold cases they’ve been associated with.
Videos taken underwater show divers peering into the abandoned vehicles during their Sunday excavations.
Divers Ken Fleming and Doug Bishop said they came across the vehicles most likely dumped during criminal activity in their attempt to solve missing persons in Doral, near Miami International Airport
Videos shot underwater show the divers looking into the abandoned vehicles during their excavations
Collectively, the volunteer team has found 60 submerged vehicles in the US that may be related to crimes
Fleming told 7News, “When we discover a place like this with multiple vehicles, it pretty much indicates that it’s a crime to dispose of the vehicles and hide them from law enforcement.”
The volunteers use sonar technology to search bodies of water after doing their research on where a lucrative body of water might be in the US.
He added: “We have a huge database of our own that we extract.
“We are now focusing on 40 people who disappeared, from two or three months ago to 30, 40 years ago.”
Doug Bishop said: ‘It’s about giving answers to families where they don’t have them’
An image of their underwater search in Florida
Parts of old vehicles can be seen underwater
Diver Ken Fleming added: ‘We have a case where someone drove down from Pinellas County to pick up his relatives at the airport, and then they disappeared’
“So at this place, we’re near the airport, it’s a large body of water, it’s easily accessible, so we’d consider that a possible foul play.”
Collectively, the volunteer team has found 60 submerged vehicles in the US that may be related to crimes.
Doug Bishop said, “It’s about giving answers to families where they don’t have them.
“Departments must respectfully justify their use of resources, and if a case goes cold we have the opportunity to intervene.
The divers during their missing in Doral this Sunday
“We don’t have to justify our use of resources and we can help locally to relieve the pressure on staff.
‘We can do this, we specialize in it, we can do it at a high level and we do it as volunteers.’
A spokesman for the Doral Police Department said: ‘We have learned that a private search company may have located several sunken vehicles in the area of 9064 NW 13th Terr.
“While we cannot confirm this at this time, we will continue to gather further information in the coming days and work with multiple entities to investigate this matter.”