The body of an Atlanta teacher and coach who vanished last month while boating on Georgia’s Lake Oconee has been recovered from waters not far from where his fiancée was found dead shortly after their outing, a sheriff told news outlets Sunday.
Sheriff Howard Sills of Putnam County told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution that Gary Jones’ body was found on Sunday afternoon in about 45 feet of water on the popular tourist lake southeast of Atlanta.
The discovery was made not far from where the body of Jones’ fiancée, Spelman College instructor Joycelyn Wilson, was found a day after the two went missing on Feb. 8, the newspaper reported. It comes a month to the day that Wilson’s body was recovered in the vicinity of where Jones’ empty two-seater fishing boat and his sneakers were found floating.
Sills said Jones’ body was found by Wisconsin search-and-recovery expert Keith Cormican, who was brought in by Jones’ family over the weekend and used sophisticated underwater sonar in his effort, the newspaper reported.
Jones was a teacher and coach at the Westminster Schools, an exclusive Atlanta private school. The empty boat was discovered circling in the water, triggering an intensive search of the lake.
The sheriff’s office said previously that it had obtained video of Wilson and Jones launching their small boat from a marina. Authorities said at the time that they had been staying at a hotel on the lake, about 85 miles southeast of Atlanta.
The area where the body was found is about 3 miles northwest of a dam that separates Lake Oconee from neighboring Lake Sinclair just to the south. Underwater timber still stands from when the Oconee River basin was flooded to build the lake nearly half a century ago.
Previous searches involved a trained cadaver dog, government vessels and private boats, a helicopter and underwater sonar to probe parts of the lake as deep as 80 feet.
According to Westminster President Keith Evans, Jones joined the staff in 2002 and was a middle school science teacher, eighth grade basketball coach and head of the track and field program, Atlanta News First reported.
“I have had the privilege of connecting with alumni, parents, students, and faculty members who have shared stories of Gary’s legacy and the many ways he inspired both his students and colleagues. He has profoundly impacted the Wildcat community and his passing will be felt well beyond the boundaries of our campus,” Evans said.
According to ANF, Wilson was a math instructor at Spelman College, “where she made an indelible impact on both her students and colleagues,” the college said in a statement.
Earlier this month, singer and rapper CeeLo Green took to social media to mourn Wilson, saying she was like a sister to him and that “no one deserves to perish in that fashion.”
