19-year-old drowns at Lake Lanier trying to swim across cove

FORSYTH COUNTY, Ga. — A 19-year-old drowned Thursday night trying to swim across a cove on Lake Lanier, Georgia Department of Natural Resources officials said Friday.

Mark McKinnon with DNR’s Law Enforcement Division said it happened at around 7:30 p.m. in the evening. He said the teen, a male, was “attempting to swim across the cove when he became fatigued and went under.”

It happened at Young Deer Creek on Lake Lanier.

McKinnon said game wardens “located what they believed to be the victim using boat mounted sonar” around 9 p.m. 

The Forsyth County Fire Department’s dive team was able to recover the victim from a depth of 22 feet of water.

The victim has not yet been identified, McKinnon said, pending notification to the next of kin.