GhLinks Media
An Orlando woman, Sandra Lemire, vanished 11 years ago after meeting someone online.
A Florida search team, Sunshine State Sonar, claims to have discovered her remains in a submerged van near Disney World.
Lemire, a 47-year-old mother of three from Michigan, moved to Florida to take care of her grandmother.
When Sandra Lemire disappeared
She disappeared in May 2012 after heading to Kissimmee to meet a man from a now-defunct dating site.
Despite warnings from her son about meeting strangers online, Lemire went ahead with the meeting.
Her disappearance alarmed family members, especially when she didn’t return for her diabetes medication.
Surveillance footage showed Lemire spending time with the man she met online, a local McDonald’s manager, for about two hours.
However, police ruled him out as a suspect.
Sandra Lemire last seen
She was last seen driving her grandmother’s red Ford Freestyle van, which Sunshine State Sonar believes they discovered submerged in a pond.
The group conducted a 17-month search across 63 bodies of water in collaboration with the Orlando Police Department.
On December 30, 2023, using sonar technology, the search team located the van buried under 14 feet of water near the Disney World exit on I4. With the assistance of law enforcement dive teams, they recovered the vehicle.
The preliminary report by the Florida Highway Patrol suggested that the van had veered off the road and crashed into a retention pond.
Sunshine State Sonar, a volunteer-based nonprofit specializing in using sonar to locate missing persons and vehicles, expressed condolences to Lemire’s family and concluded, “Rest in peace Sandra, you are finally home.”
Sunshine State Sonar
This isn’t the first time the group has assisted in locating missing persons. Earlier, in April, they helped recover the body of Sarah Dreyer, a Florida mother who vanished while dropping her kids off at school.
