A man who was staying with friends on Lake Sinclair for the July 4th holiday was found presumably drowned Friday about 2 p.m., according to Putnam County Sheriff Howard Sills.
The body of David Hoyt Glass, 34, of Mt. Airy, Georgia, was discovered by Georgia DNR officers using sonar. Divers from the Baldwin County Public Safety Department recovered the body, with assistance from Putnam County Fire Department’s dive team. Sills said the body was discovered in an area where the water is about 10-foot deep.
“The unfortunate death appears to be an accidental drowning and there is no indication of foul play at this point in time,” Sills said. “The investigation will continue until we hear from an autopsy by the state crime lab in Atlanta.”
The sheriff’s office first became aware of the situation in the wee hours of the morning when an elderly couple called 911 saying they could hear someone out on the lake yelling for help. Deputies searched the area to no avail. They called in reinforcements at daybreak to assist in the search.
Sills said deputies were going door-to-door on Nina Drive, asking if anyone had heard or seen anything unusual and asking people to check their security cameras. They learned that a group of people had been staying next door to the elderly couple’s house, and they’d been out on the dock “partying” late into the night.
At a nearby short-term rental house, someone told Deputy Nick Fazio that they’d seen “a guy on the dock around 6:30 a.m. who appeared to be lost and confused, and they took a picture of him,” Sills said.
Fazio took the picture to the house next door to the elderly couple, and a woman there recognized the man in the picture and identified him as Kevin Kuhn. She told Fazio that Kuhn had been drinking and had passed out while swimming and woke up under somebody else’s dock, Sills said.
Kuhn said Glass had been with him on the dock drinking, but when Kuhn woke up, Glass was nowhere to be seen.
Putnam County Coroner Hollis Harrison said an autopsy is being done at the Georgia Bureau of Investigation’s Crime Lab in Decatur to determine the exact cause and manner of the victim’s death. Harrison said he had not yet received the results at the newspaper’s press time Wednesday.