Mom vanished leaving date 11 years ago, Florida group says. Body found near Disney World
More than a decade after a mother never returned home from a date, her body has been found inside her vehicle in a retention pond off a highway exit for Disney World, a Florida search and recovery group said.
Sandra Lemire, 47, was living with her grandmother in 2012 when she borrowed her red minivan to go on a date with a man she met online, the Sunshine State Sonar search and recovery team said in a Dec. 31 Facebook post.
On May 8, Lemire drove from Orlando to a Kissimee Denny’s, where she called her grandmother to tell her she had arrived, the team said.
Lemire told her grandma she would call again after the date, the team said, but that call never came.
The group said Lemire was last seen leaving the Denny’s in the minivan.
Police at the time said they found the man Lemire met. He told them he had gone on the date with Lemire but they had left separately, WESH reported in 2012.
A month later, police said her disappearance was suspicious, but they did not share any potential leads, the outlet reported.
The case into Lemire’s disappearance went cold, and for the better part of a decade her family was left to wonder what happened to her.
Then in 2022, Timothy Sharon, Lemire’s son, reached out to Mike Sullivan of Sunshine State Sonar, a volunteer search and rescue group based out of St. Petersburg.
“Michael and I have been in touch for a few days now and this guy and his team are so amazing,” Sharon wrote on Facebook in December 2022. “Hoping to bring this case to a(n) end. They don’t have to do this. They don’t have to search for a mother that went missing 10 years ago!! But, they are!!”
Over the course of 17 months, Sunshine State Sonar searched 63 bodies of water looking for the red minivan and Lemire, the team said.
In December, Sullivan told WESH that police shared Lemire’s last cellphone tower location, allowing the search team to narrow its search, which ultimately “cracked” the case.
“At approximately 1:30 p.m. on December 30, 2023 we got a hit on sonar in a small retention pond at the Disney World exit on I4. We located what appeared to be a minivan submerged in 14 feet of water. Our team quickly suited up and dove on the vehicle to make the license plate confirmation,” the group said.
Inside the vehicle were human remains, identified by Sunshine State Sonar and Sharon as Lemire.
The Orlando Police Department told McClatchy News it is waiting for results from the medical examiner to release an official identification of the body.
“(11) years she was down there. Her bones were found in the back of the van,” Sharon wrote on Facebook on Dec. 31. “She was brought out on New Year’s Eve and will be coming home soon. I love and miss you mom!”
Kissimmee is about 20 miles south of Orlando.
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