Teacher’s body discovered a month after fiancée found dead near his boat on Georgia lake, sheriff says
An Atlanta teacher and coach disappeared while rowing on Lake Oconey, Georgia last month, after his fiancé was found dead shortly after their outing, the sheriff told news media Sunday.
Putnam County Sheriff Howard Sills told Atlanta Magazine Constitution The body of Gary Jones was found Sunday afternoon in about 45 feet of water in a popular tourist lake in southeast Atlanta.
The discovery was found to be the body of Jones’ fiance, the body of Spellman Academy coach Joycelyn Wilson was found the day after his disappearance on February 8, the report said. On that day a month, Wilson’s body was found near two empty fishing boats and his sneakers.
Sills said Jones’s body was discovered by Wisconsin search and recovery expert Keith Cormican, who was brought in by Jones’ family over the weekend and used exquisite underwater sonar.
Jones is a teacher and coach at Westminster School, the exclusive private school in Atlanta. The empty ship was found hovering in the water, triggering an in-depth search of the lake.
The Sheriff’s Office has said before that it has obtained videos of Wilson and Jones launching boats from the dock. Authorities said at the time that they had been living in a hotel on a lake about 85 miles southeast of Atlanta.
The area where the body was found was about 3 miles northwest of the dam, which separates Lake Oconee from the adjacent Lake Sinclair to the south. Underwater timber still stands when the Oconee River basin was submerged to build a lake nearly half a century ago.
Previous searches involved trained corpse dogs, government vessels and private boats, a helicopter and underwater sonar to detect the depths of the lake, at 80 feet deep.
According to Westminster President Keith Evans, Jones joined the staff in 2002 and was a middle school science teacher, eighth-grade basketball coach and track and field program director. Atlanta News first reported.
“I have the privilege to connect with alumni, parents, students and faculty who share Gary’s legacy and the many ways he inspired his students and colleagues. He has had a profound impact on the Wildcat community and his death will be beyond the boundaries of our campus,” Evans said.
According to ANFWilson, a math coach at Spellman College, said in a statement that “she has had an indelible impact on both students and colleagues.”
Earlier this month, singers and rappers Ceelo Green enters social media Mourning Wilson, saying she was like his sister, “no one should perish in this way.”
