Miami-Dade police in Florida recovered several cars Tuesday from the murky waters of a lake in Doral.where detectives believe that up to 30 vehicles would be submerged at the bottom.
“Most of the vehicles that are there are very old, which leads us to believe that these vehicles were probably dumped in this lake long before these warehouses were here.”said Miami-Dade police detective Álvaro Zabaleta.
After 10:00 a.m., a tender truck pulled the first car out of the water in the area of NW 90th Avenue and 13th Terrace.
Police said Sunday that they were alerted to vehicles after a volunteer dive team, United Seach Corps, searched the lake.
“We have been informed that a private search company may have located several sunken vehicles. in the 9064 NW 13th Terrace area. Although we cannot confirm it at this time, we will continue to gather more information in the coming days and will work with multiple entities to investigate this matter“, Doral police said in a statement.
“Obviously we don’t want these things to happen in our backyard and we hope they don’t continue to happen,” said Doral Mayor Christi Fraga.
“It seems as if this area was a hot spot when none of this developed where the cars drove into the lake”he added.
The search and recovery process is being handled by Miami-Dade police, who also received information about the cars over the weekend.
“We received information from a citizen on Sunday that he was apparently diving here, he appeared to observe what appeared to be several dozen vehicles that had been dumped in this lake.. Once we received this information, our unit of divers immediately collaborated with other agencies in the Miami-Dade Police Department and the Miami-Dade Fire Department so that we could put together this operation in order to recover all the vehicles,” Zabaleta said.
He indicated that the first vehicle they pulled out of the water was a 2002 Nissan Ultima and it was confirmed to be a stolen car, he reported. CBSNews.
“It is very likely that these are the type of vehicles that we are going to find here lying in this lake. Vehicles that were abandoned and wanted to get rid of. Or those who were taken for a ride were robbed and thrown into the lake.”Zabaleta said.
He noted that homicide investigators were ready in case a car came out of the water and connected to any pending investigation, and further said that they have no information that leads them to believe these cases would escalate to that level.
Officials will now use each car’s VIN number as the starting point for inquiries.
“The police will now go back and run those vin numbers and it will be very interesting to see how many unsolved crimes can now be closed because of the recovery of these individual vehicles,” said Stuart Kaplan, an attorney and former FBI agent.
The detective said that hopefully getting the vehicles out of the water will help them close any open investigations.
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