Nine days after a 57-year-old boater from Gwinnett County went missing near Lake Lanier, state rangers Monday found his body.
Jerry Kornmeier of Snellville is the third person found dead near Lake Lanier since early April. A group of fishermen found a badly decomposed body that turned out to be missing Winder teen Estelle Kouassi on April 3. And authorities confirmed a body recovered April 28 was missing DeKalb firefighter Jason Blalock.
About 5 p.m. April 30, Georgia Department of Natural Resources rangers were called to Cocktail Cove near Lake Lanier Islands in reference to a missing boater.
“Upon arrival, they located the empty boat of Mr. Kornmeier adrift, in open water, just outside Cocktail Cove,” DNR spokesman Mark McKinnon said.
For more than a week, rangers searched the Cocktail Cove area with deputies from Hall and Forsyth counties as well as Hall firefighters.
“During the first four days of the search,” McKinnon said, “rangers had covered the area as thoroughly as possible with sonar equipment, but with very deep water, standing timber on the bottom, and an unverified location of exactly where the victim may have entered the water, they decided to scale back the search to shoreline sweeps several times a day.”
Just before 10 a.m. Monday, a boater called 911 to report a body in the water just south of Cocktail Cove. Rangers quickly arrived and recovered the body, which will be taken to the DeKalb County Medical Examiner’s Office for an autopsy, Hall County Sheriff’s Office spokeswoman Deputy Nicole Bailes said.
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