Dive team finds body of missing boater

DELAWARE — After a third day of searching, a dive team recovered the body of a Pickerington boater not far from where he went into the water Sunday at Alum Creek Lake.

Just after 1 p.m. Tuesday, the team located the body of Jimenez-Yege Victor Lorenzo, 29, who authorities believe left his 19-foot boat Sunday afternoon without a life jacket, according to an Ohio Department of Natural Resources spokesman.

The discovery ends days of uncertainty and worry for Lorenzo’s friends and family, many of whom had camped out along the banks of the Delaware County reservoir since Lorenzo went missing.

For Jose Bautista, the ordeal began while he was riding a Jet Ski on Sunday while visiting his Columbus relatives at the lake.

“I was enjoying my day and then this happened,” he said, describing a young girl waving to him. When Bautista, 28, of Port Chester, New York, approached, he immediately saw the danger.

Three children were flailing in the water, crying out in Spanish for help. One of them had lost his life jacket.

“He was almost passed out,” Bautista recalled of the boy, who was grasping onto another. “I put him on the boat and he was crying and he laid down.” He said he then returned to help two other boys, both with life jackets, returning them on the Jet Ski to a large motor boat. That’s when they told him that an adult Lorenzo Rescue crews from the Ohio Department of Natural Resources and Orange Township using scuba and sonar gear search Alum Creek Lake in the rain on Tuesday for the body of a boater who went overboard Sunday evening.

— Lorenzo— was missing from the boat.

“That’s when I called 911,” said Bautista. It was unclear on Tuesday whether Bautista had fallen from the boat or perhaps had gone in to help the children. A relative said he was a good swimmer.

The Ohio Department of Natural Resources, with help from Berlin, Genoa and Orange townships, deployed

sonar and divers to find Lorenzo.

Bautista said he wishes he could have done more.

“They were so scared. I was just so worried for them.”