Updated: Police identify man who drowned in southwest Wichita lake
Update Friday:
Police have identified the victim as 22-year-old Kyler Rutherford of Wichita.
Police spokesperson Juan Rebolledo said the investigators were preparing to end the search when they found him. He was about 100 feet from shore where it was about 30 feet deep, he said.
Rebolledo would not say if alcohol was involved.
Orginal Thursday:
Wichita Fire Department search crews recovered the body of a man in his 20s who drowned in a southwest Wichita lake Thursday afternoon.
A submersion call came in shortly before 4 p.m. in the 2600 block of S. West Street in a lake near the intersection of West and Pawnee streets, a Sedgwick County Emergency Communications supervisor said.
Fire crews were met by an eyewitness who last saw the man before he went into the water, Wichita Fire said in a Facebook post.
Wichita Fire and Sedgwick County Fire Department water rescue divers arrived on scene and conducted search and rescue for two hours before switching to recovery mode, Wichita Fire battalion Chief Jose Ocadiz said during a media briefing at the scene.
Parts of the lake are about 40 feet deep with a visibility of 10 feet. Divers searched the lake in a grid-like pattern using a map as well as sonar to search for the man, Ocadiz added.
At 8:35 p.m., divers retrieved the man’s body from the lake. His identity and city of origin has not been released, according to the Facebook post.
This story was originally published August 3, 2023 at 10:24 PM.