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NEED TO KNOW
- A body was found floating in Lake Champlain in Vermont on Thursday, Oct. 23
- The body is believed to be that of a 71-year-old man from Montpelier, Vt., who had embarked on the lake with a 67-year-old relative from Woodbury, Vt., at around 2:30 p.m. local time on Tuesday, Oct. 21
- The victim has not been publicly identified
A body was found in the waters of Lake Champlain in Vermont on Thursday, Oct. 23, two days after a 71-year-old man embarked on a trip there with a relative.
The man and his family member, 67, headed to the lake from Woodbury, Vt., at around 2:30 p.m. local time on Tuesday, Oct. 21, per NBC10 Boston.
The body was discovered two miles from where the canoe reportedly capsized off Knight Island State Park in North Hero, Vt., on Thursday, Oct. 23, the outlet reports. Both men were wearing life jackets, but were separated when their canoe capsized. The 67-year-old man was able to swim ashore to Knight Island and took shelter in the caretaker’s house after dark.
The men were relatives, according to local Vermont outlet WCAX. With no way to communicate, the surviving man, identified as Paul Council, located a canoe and made his way back to North Hero to alert the authorities of the incident.
PEOPLE has reached out to the Grand Isle County Sheriff’s Department and the Vermont Department of Fish and Wildlife.
Rescue crews including state police, the Grand Isle County Sheriff’s Department, the Vermont Department of Fish and Wildlife, and others then began to search for the 71-year-old victim, according to local affiliate NBC5.
Around 12 p.m. on Wednesday, an individual on Holiday Point Road in North Hero called police to say they spotted a body floating in the water, according to the outlet. The body awaits autopsy and notification of relatives. Police do not suspect foul play at this time.
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Lake Champlain, once considered the sixth Great Lake, is located between Vermont, New York, and Quebec, Canada. At its deepest, Lake Champlain plunges to 400 ft., according to the Lake Champlain Basin Program.
The incident comes days after a family in Massachusetts similarly swam ashore to a nearby island off the coast of Cape Cod. The Sullivan family’s boat caught on fire in their sleep, and they swam to the privately owned Naushon Island, where they were rescued by the Naushon Trust and the U.S. Coast Guard.