GRAND PRAIRIE (1080 KRLD) - The Grand Prairie Fire Department says divers are close to recovering the body of a man who went under at Joe Pool Lake Wednesday afternoon and failed to resurface.
"We're using an advanced sonar out there, and we are confident that we located him on sonar," says Bill Murphy, Grand Prairie assistant fire chief Bill Murphy. "It's in the deeper water; so unless we get a good sonar hit, we're not just going to arbitrarily dive."
Murphy says the man was actually wearing his life jacket when he jumped from the boat yesterday afternoon.
"He was doing everything good," says Murphy. "He had a lifejacket on when he entered the water; and from what I was told, they were just floating around in the water, close to the boat. And at some point, he took his life jacket off."
And that's when the man experienced trouble.
"With the wind being as strong as it was, it separated him from his life jacket," Murphy says, "and he went under after that."
Murphy says with people making up for lost time out of the pandemic, this is shaping up to be a bad year for drownings.
"For us to have three drownings before even the Fourth of July is alarming," says Murphy. "So I encourage everybody to be safe when you're out of the lakes, but wear the life jackets, it's so important."
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