Recovery of Man's Body Is Deepest Ever in US

Remains of Ryan Normoyle retrieved from 1,565 feet below the surface
By Arden Dier,  Newser Staff
Posted Sep 30, 2020 11:38 AM CDT
Never in the US Has a Body Been Pulled From This Depth
A recovery vessel is seen on California’s Lake Tahoe.   (South Lake Tahoe Police Department)

The body of a man missing since August has been retrieved from 1,565 feet below the surface of Lake Tahoe in what's thought to be the deepest recovery ever recorded in the US. Ryan Normoyle's body was recovered Sunday, some seven weeks after the 29-year-old disappeared. He'd rented a boat at the lake straddling California and Nevada on Aug. 10. "That night, Ryan's boat washed ashore in Glenbrook, Nevada, but Ryan wasn't on it," the South Lake Tahoe Police Department said Tuesday, per Fox News. Investigators learned Normoyle "had recorded himself jumping off the boat, but the boat was left slightly in gear and moving forward at a slow speed." Authorities believe he couldn’t catch up to the boat and drowned.

After search efforts failed to locate the body, Normoyle's family recruited Keith Cormican of Bruce's Legacy, a nonprofit that specializes in underwater body recovery. The group is named for Cormican’s brother, a firefighter who drowned while trying to recover a man's body in Wisconsin in 1995, per the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. The nonprofit was assisting police when the body was found Saturday "near the GPS coordinates that were collected" from Normoyle's phone while it was recording. Cormican said Sunday's recovery was the deepest ever in the US or Canada. Lake Tahoe, the second-deepest lake in the US, has a maximum depth of 1,645 feet, per the New York Post. A body was recovered there at a depth of 1,062 feet in 2018. (More Lake Tahoe stories.)

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