HASTINGS, Fla. – Officials with the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission have confirmed that the bodies of two missing canoers in Hastings have been recovered.
St. Johns County Fire Rescue, FWC and several other agencies searched Saturday on a pond on George Miller Road in Hastings for the men.
FWC Public Information Officer Chad Weber said they received calls about the missing people around 3 p.m. Saturday. Weber said a third canoer was with them, but that person made it back to shore.
Weber wasn’t able to give the condition or any information about the third person.
St. Johns Fire Rescue missing canoer search
The search and rescue efforts had a large presence with a command post, but the efforts scaled back to only two law enforcement vehicles Saturday evening.
Weber described how the search was conducted on the nearly 25-acre pond.
“Typically when we receive these phone calls for search and rescue, we pull every asset we have in the area whether it’s air asset, via helicopter, sonar, or our dive team,” Weber said. “We kind of pull out all stops to locate the individuals that are missing.”