'Several Dozen' Cars Found Submerged in Miami Lake

Miami-Dade police officers have begun removing 32 cars found submerged in a Doral, FL lake.

Private investigators looking into a missing persons cold case hired divers to trawl the lake for evidence. They subsequently discovered dozens of cars below the surface. Local police were notified, and on Tuesday morning efforts began to fish the vehicles out.

Many of the exhumed cars date back to the 1990s. A ‘95 Acura Legend was the first car retrieved, followed by a Ford Econoline van, a Cadillac DeVille and a Crown Victoria. So far, the vehicles found have been tied to various auto theft cases reported between 1996–2002. Officials are hopeful that the cars may hold evidence for other cold cases, such as frauds and homicides.

Miami-Dade police representative Alvaro Zabaleta said that officers had anticipated the cars were involved in crimes. “These are most likely the type of vehicles we’re going to find in this lake,” Zabaleta stated at the scene, via WFLA. “Vehicles that perhaps have been abandoned and they wanted to get rid of them, and they got rid of them here, or those that took them for a joy ride, they were stolen and then they were dumped inside the lake.” Zabaleta feels it’s likely a majority of the vehicles had been sunk before the nearby businesses moved in.

The search is expected to continue over the next several days, with only four cars retrieved on Tuesday. “It’s impossible for us to get to the rest…due to the multiple vehicles being tangled in certain areas of the lake,” Edwin Lopez, Doral’s chief of police, told Chris Cuomo on News Nation. “So we need to bring in extra equipment.”