Search resumes for teenage London swimmer missing in Lake Erie

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PORT STANLEY – The search resumed Monday for a missing 14-year-old London swimmer in Lake Erie, off the main beach here, with police warning volunteers to stay away amid stormy conditions.

“The family and the OPP would like to thank the volunteers for their search efforts to date. However, due to the potential of adverse weather/water conditions and a concern for public safety, the OPP is requesting that individuals avoid the search area at this time,” police said Monday morning.

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OPP divers were back in the water, searching for the teenager who entered the water Sunday but didn’t come back out.

One volunteer who showed up early to help, at 4 a.m., said he was thinking about the missing swimmer and couldn’t sleep.

“We’ve been looking – we went everywhere,” said Ala Alsuliemm, a Fanshawe College student who was in the water searching the beach area.

Alsuliemm, who arrived from Syria nine years ago, said he hearing the missing youth was also from Syria. He searched the water with his cousin and father.

“I couldn’t sleep. We drive this morning from London,” he said. “We’re trying our best to find (the swimmer). It could be any one of us, any one of our family.”

Police on Monday said two people, a 44-year-old and a 17-year-old from London, were seen in distress in the lake early Sunday afternoon by the Central Eglin Beach Rescue Service and were pulled from the water and brought ashore, where they told lifeguards a third person was still in the water.

Police released no names or other details about the three individuals, only that they received a report about the missing swimmer about 2:20 p.m. Sunday. An extensive search followed, aided by volunteers and a helicopter and an aerial drone.

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Mark Hall, who was walking his dog on the beach Monday, said the scene a day earlier reminded him of his work as a London firefighter.

“When I saw helicopters, I knew it was not a good sign – that is never good,” said Hall, who has lived in Port Stanley for more than 25 years.

“It’s a tragedy. It’s been years since there was a drowning. For the number of people on the beach here, it’s remarkable it doesn’t happen more often,” said Hall, who credited volunteers for forming a human chain Sunday to help search.

Deaths in the water off Port Stanley, a popular summer destination, have been rare in recent years.

Eight years ago, an 18-year-old from Ingersoll drowned but lifeguards managed to save a woman he was with at the beach. The teenager’s death was the first drowning at the village’s main beach since August 2004, when eight-year-old Mitchell Temple-Medhurst went under during a supervised outing with other children from Madame Vanier Children’s Services in London.

In June 1998, three young men died in separate incidents when they were swept off the Port Stanley pier. The deaths prompted then-owner Transport Canada to close pedestrian access to the pier, access that was only restored in 2015 after extensive renovations.

ndebono@postmedia.com

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