Mystery solved? Car of Orlando woman missing since 2012 found in I-4 pond
It had already been a long afternoon when Mike Sullivan dipped into 60-degree water — his 16th dive of the day — searching for the vehicle of a woman who disappeared 12 years ago.
That chilly dive proved to be fruitful.
At about 14 feet deep, Sullivan, who owns and operates the volunteer search team Sunshine State Sonar, found a red 2004 Ford Freestar containing human remains and with the Florida tag J36-8ZE.
The license plate belongs to the missing woman, Sandra Lemire.
While the remains have not been identified, the Orlando Police Department confirmed to the Sentinel on Tuesday that the car found in a retention pond along I-4 near Disney World is linked to Lemire. Her family released a statement to the Orlando Sentinel’s television partner Spectrum News 13 indicating they believe the remains are hers.
Lemire left her Orlando home in 2012 to meet a man at a restaurant in Kissimmee and vanished. Her disappearance, which was deemed suspicious after eight months with no sign of her or her car, caused great anguish for her loved ones.
In 2022, Sunshine State Sonar picked up her case to try to find her car. On Sunday, it succeeded, and the location of the discovery suggests Lemire’s death may have been an accident.
As soon as his sonar technology identified a van in the water, Sullivan called Lemire’s son Timothy, who was a young boy when his mother vanished.
“We were all very emotional,” Sullivan said. “We were on a boat and we panned to the sonar screen, I remember telling him, ‘We are above your mother’.”
“As soon as I got to the plate I remember doing one big swipe,” Sullivan continued. “It seemed like forever for all that silt to clear, but as soon as I saw the J and the three, I just knew we found her.”
The Sentinel’s attempt to reach her family was met with a request for privacy.
OPD said the Florida Department of Law Enforcement is working on identifying the remains that were located in the vehicle and the Florida Highway Patrol is handling the crash investigation.
Orange County and Osceola County Sheriff’s Office deputies assisted in the response.
Sullivan credits the successful search to a tip shared by OPD two weeks ago that informed her family of the location of the last tower her cell phone pinged.
Prior to that, Sullivan said they had searched about 110 bodies of water with no results.
“That [tip] gave us something to go on,” he said. “We found out she was not heading towards her home. The vehicle was heading toward Tampa. That’s what led us to the area.”
arabines@orlandosentinel.com