1 Confirmed, 1 Presumed Drowning

LAKE WYLIE, S.C. – It looked like a beautiful day to be on the water at Lake Wylie. Instead; a deadly start to the holiday weekend. Two calls for help, after two men in two separate instances went under the water and didn’t resurface.

Robin Hope of Kings Mountain can’t explain the multiple lake drownings in the past month.  She says, “I just know that two of ’em in one day is just crazy.”

The first was 40-year-old Lester Cook, III of Clover. He was working on the dock behind a home on Poinciana Drive in York, when investigators say he fell into the water. Dive team crews eventually pulled Cook’s body out of the lake near the Allison Creek boat ramp. Autopsy and toxicology reports won’t be ready for a few weeks.

Chris Sherwood was near the lake Friday. He tells WCCB, “It’s startling. A lot more (drownings) this year than I’ve heard in a long time. You have Fourth of July coming up, so of course a lot of boats will be out on the lake.”

The second call for help came around 8:15 AM. Witnesses report seeing a man in a broken down fishing boat jump into the water and try to swim to shore. He went under and didn’t resurface. Crews spent hours canvassing the water near the Buster Boyd Bridge. Hope says, “We were eating at T-Bones and our waitress came up and said that there was two more drownings. Today.”

Rescue efforts have now turned into a presumed recovery of the second man’s body. Dennis Mabry of Cowpens, SC, says what happened on the water has prompted him to wear a life jacket. He says, “It’s just a thing we do sometimes, everybody fishin’, take(s) a chance. And sometimes we pay for it.”

We’re told dive teams will be back in Lake Wylie Saturday morning as soon as the sun comes up. They’ll use sonar to continue what is likely now a recovery mission.