Body of Preston County man missing after Lake Erie capsizing found
The body of a 73-year-old Preston County man who went missing after his boat overturned on Lake Erie in August has been found on the lake's shore in Ashtabula, Ohio.
The body of a 73-year-old Preston County man who went missing after his boat overturned on Lake Erie in August has been found on the lake's shore in Ashtabula, Ohio.
The body was found the afternoon of Monday, Sept. 28, at Walnut Beach in Ashtabula, about 15 miles west of where the boat went over. The Ashtabula County Coroner's Office confirmed it was Rodney Nieman of Bruceton Mills, W.Va., the boater missing since the Aug. 12 capsizing north of Conneaut, the Star Beacon reported. The coroner's office said no autopsy would be done.
What happened on the lake Nieman, his wife, Mary, and a family friend were fishing on Lake Erie on Wednesday, Aug. 12, when their 22-foot boat overturned about 9 miles offshore near Conneaut, Ohio, according to the U.S. Coast Guard.
The Coast Guard's Sector Eastern Great Lakes received a report at 10:50 a.m. that the boat had overturned with three people in the water. A good Samaritan pulled two of them from the lake, and both were reported uninjured. They were wearing life jackets. Nieman was not, Conneaut's acting fire chief told the Star Beacon.
What caused the boat to overturn has not been made public.
The search A Coast Guard helicopter crew from Air Station Detroit and boat crews from Coast Guard stations in Erie, Pa., and Fairport, Ohio, searched for Nieman along with the Ohio Department of Natural Resources, the Ashtabula County Dive Team and the Conneaut Fire Department.
The Coast Guard suspended its search around 5 p.m. that day after covering 9 square nautical miles over about 7.5 hours of combined searching. The Ohio DNR kept searching through that Friday without finding him, and the effort later became a recovery operation.
In a statement shared with news outlets in August, Nieman's family thanked "the community and over 10 agencies that have been searching for our precious dad."
Wear a life jacket Lake Erie is the shallowest of the Great Lakes, and its waves can build quickly. Boating safety officials urge everyone on the water to wear a properly fitted life jacket at all times, not just keep one on board, since there is often no time to put one on once a boat goes over.
