Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
‘It was a nightmare, an absolute nightmare come true’
Man went missing while fishing on lake. His body was found by a drone, police say.
COCONUT CREEK — Daniel Potter, 60, died doing what he loved.
On Nov. 14, Potter left his home in a subdivision on Coco Lake in Coconut Creek with his canoe and fishing rod like he did on many evenings. He always returned from his trips after a few hours, said his wife, Justine Potter, 50.
But by nearly 10 that night, Justine and Daniel Potter’s 14-year-old daughter, Samantha Potter, called her mom at work, alarmed. Her dad still hadn’t come home. She walked around the familiar lake behind their home but saw nothing.
“His phone, his keys, his wallet, everything in it was all home,” Justine Potter said. “So he’s, like, going to come back, you know. And he didn’t.”
A neighbor flying a drone over the water on Nov. 18 discovered Potter’s body.
Witnesses told police they last saw him alive about 7:30 p.m. Nov. 14, Scotty Leamon, a spokesperson for the Coconut Creek Police Department, said.
Over the course of six days, several South Florida police agencies, including the Broward Sheriff ’s Office and the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, a nonprofit called Guardians for the Missing and fire rescue teams sent crews to the 80-feet-deep lake equipped with boats and a helicopter for the search. Sheriff ’s Office divers found “several spots of interest” in their underwater search, Leamon said.
Each day that her husband was missing, Justine Potter’s thoughts raced from one scenario to another, trying to make sense of what happened to her husband who routinely boated out on the water alone. She clung to the possibility that he was still alive, she said, but her hope dwindled in the passing days.
“Your thoughts get carried away with you because you go back and forth with so many thoughts about what could have happened,” she said.
Justine Potter walked the lake endlessly on Sunday. She found one of the oars had washed up on a bank. Her daughter later found a sandal in the same spot. The second one floated in later too.
“It was a nightmare, an absolute nightmare come true,” she said. “I couldn’t believe it. It was indescribable. Where is he? Where
is he? Where is this boat?”
With no definitive answers, Justine Potter said the family has wondered whether his past heart issues played a role in her husband’s death. He had a heart attack two years ago and an infected aorta last year, she said.
“He had to have somehow lost his balance is what we are speculating or somehow the canoe tipped over and hit him in the head, maybe. We don’t know,” she said.
An investigator with the Broward Medical Examiner’s Office said water was found in Potter’s nose, mouth and lugs and suspect he drowned, Justine Potter said. Final results from the autopsy are pending.
Leamon said FWC was planning to launch their boat into the water about 8 a.m. Thursday when they learned the neighbor who was flying the drone spotted a body floating in the water. Their boat was needed only to retrieve Potter.
Since Potter disappeared, neighbors had flown drones and taken their own boats out to search, Leamon said. Police do not expect foul play.
Authorities believe they have spotted the canoe underwater, but the lake, formerly a rock quarry, is so deep that dive teams have not been able to get to it yet, Leamon said. They’re still attempting to retrieve it.
Potter was dedicated to the things and people he loved, his wife said. He worked as an electrician for 20 years and rarely missed a day, she said.
His daughter has fond memories of Potter taking her out boating on the ocean for trips to parks where they would barbecue and spend the day together with their dog.
Justine Potter described her husband as “your all-American guy” who loved to watch a sunset on his boat.
“It gives me a lot of closure, but it doesn’t make the pain any better. But it makes me feel a little bit better knowing that he died doing what he was passionate about,” she said.