ORLANDO, Fla. (WFLA) — A Florida family said it may finally have answers to the disappearance of a woman who went missing in 2012.
According to a report by WESH, Sandra Lemire of Orlando went missing in May 2012 after going on a date with a man she met online. At the time, she was living with her grandmother and drove a red minivan.
For almost 12 years, no one knew what happened to Lemire.
“Of all the cases we were working, this was the case I was least optimistic about,” said Mike Sullivan of Sunshine State Sonar, which is based out of St. Petersburg.
However, this changed when Sullivan’s team, which has found missing people’s vehicles in bodies of water in the past, got information that helped them pinpoint where Lemire might be.
“The detectives from Orlando Police gave us some new information that we could use, and they gave us the location of her last cell phone tower,” Sullivan told WESH.
The volunteer searchers ended up finding a red minivan with human remains in a retention pond near Disney and World Drive. Sullivan himself dived into the water to see if it was her vehicle.
“When the silt cleared, I can start seeing the numbers: ‘J,'” he said. “And as soon as I saw the ‘J’ and the ‘3,’ I’m like: ‘We have her.'”
In total, Sullivan searched 63 bodies of water for Lemire’s vehicle before finding the minivan. He immediately called her son to tell him the news.
“What he did was amazing. And without him and his team, none of this would have been possible,” Timothy Lemire Jr. told WESH. “They didn’t ask for a dollar. That’s just the kindness of their heart.”
According to WESH, Orlando police confirmed that the vehicle is tied to the missing woman’s case, but the Florida Department of Law Enforcement was working to identify the remains.
