Officials: Boat found at Lake Meredith could be missing man’s

FRITCH, Texas (KFDA) - As the search for Ryan Kennedy continues into its third week, officials have located a boat that they say could be his.

“We have located a boat in the search area, and again this technology is pretty high resolution so we were able to put some rough measurements on it and it is of the right size of his boat but we have not verified that yet,” said Eric Smith, Superintendent of Lake Meredith.

During a search using a side-scanning sonar, officials found a boat at the bottom of the lake. Through measurements from the sonar, it looks to be the boat that belongs to Kennedy.

The search has been suspended today due to the high winds. However, dive teams will be out Tuesday morning.

“We are trying to get divers in the water to see if that is the missing hunters boat. We haven’t verified that yet. The weather is not working with us right now, the winds are really high, the waves are high on the lake so it’s beyond our safety margins. We wont be putting divers in the water today because of that. We will try again tomorrow morning to see if we can get a little bit of smoother water and just so when the divers are around both the dive boat and the boat on the bottom of the lake, they’re as safe as they can be,” said Smith.

Kennedy has been missing since Sunday, December 15. He called his family to tell them he had killed a deer at Lake Meredith and would be heading home. However, he did not return home.

That night, rangers found the man’s truck and boat trailer, but there was no sign of him or the boat.

You can donate to help his family here.

Copyright 2020 KFDA. All rights reserved.