Missing doctor found in frozen pond five days after leaving home in winter storm
A doctor who went missing during last week’s winter storm was found in a frozen pond near his house, police said.
Authorities have confirmed the death of Dr Bolek Payan, a psychiatrist at Henry Ford Allegiant Health in Jackson, Michigan.
Payan went missing on Thursday, December 22, while a polar vortex was forming over the nearby Great Lakes. Around 9.30pm that evening, temperatures in Jackson County rapidly dropped to 20 degrees Fahrenheit over the course of about two hours.
The following days saw even colder temperatures, dropping as low as -2 degrees Fahrenheit.
Friends and family had not heard from Payan since that Thursday when he left the hospital.
Before going to work, Payan dropped his dogs off at a his friend Nicole Keiser’s home, WILX News reported. He planned to pick them up that evening at 6.30pm, but never showed up.
He was reported missing shortly afterward. ‘For his truck to be here without coming to the house to pick up the dogs that would be out of character,’ Keiser told the station. ‘Something happened and I don’t know what.’
After he was reported missing, detectives discovered security camera footage from Payan’s home, showing the doctor leaving in the mid-afternoon on December 22.
Police searched the rest of Payan’s house with K-9 units and drones, but were unable to find any sign of the doctor. They instead decided to focus their efforts on a frozen pond on the property.
Detectives cut holes in the ice on Monday, December 26, and divers immediately began searching the body of water for any signs of Payan. On Tuesday afternoon around 12.30pm, divers located his body.
‘Detectives believe Dr. Payan would have been deceased, prior to when he was reported missing, due to the weather conditions on the day that he left his residence and the fact that he was in the water,’ Blackman Township Public Safety said on Tuesday.
Authorities also said they would be conducting an autopsy and a toxicology panel on the deceased doctor.
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