Divers in Florida pull 32 cars from a Miami lake

Straight out of a mob film, or more likely, “Cocaine Cowboys,” volunteer divers in Florida discovered more than 30 cars submerged in a lake near Miami International Airport. A piece in The New York Times said the discovery was made by three underwater crews representing three companies — Recon Dive, United Search Corps, and Sunshine State Sonar — that search bodies of water to help families find missing loved ones involved in cold cases. The divers showed up last Friday, and by Saturday had come across the parking lot on the lakebed. At least two police departments, Doral Police and Miami-Dade Police, began overseeing work to pull out cars by Tuesday morning.  

NBC 6 Miami got footage of two wreckers working together to pull cars from the water near Northwest 13th Terrace in Doral. Doral Police Department Chief Edwin Lopez told NBC, “The first vehicle was an Acura Legend that was removed. It was stolen around 2002,” and, “The second vehicle was a 1980s vehicle that was stolen in the late ’90s.” Doral Mayor Christi Fraga told NBC the locale was apparently favored by car thieves. “It seems that this area was a hot spot when none of this was developed, where cars were driven into the lakes.”

Police spokespersons noted a 2022 Nissan Altima and a 1980’s Cadillac among the catch. Nothing so far sounds anywhere close to the first-gen NSX pulled from the Yadkin River in North Carolina earlier this year. Helix Auto Works bought that algae and aluminum wreck for $8,500 and is in the midst of restoring it. This sounds like the haul of middling fare from when 40 cars were pulled from the Cumberland River and Percy Priest Lake near Nashville in 2021.

In Doral, one of the dive company owners told the NYT, “There was a lot of crime during the cocaine wars in Miami,” referring to a spell in the 1980s known as the “Miami drug war” when the city earned the title “Drug Capital of the World.” The suggestion was that the cars could have had something to do with cartel activity of the time. Authorities said no bodies have been found so far, and they don’t have any cold cases tied to the lake.

When the work’s finished here, the three dive companies will move on to another lake or river to continue a years-long effort to find missing loved ones. Said the owner of United Search Corps, “There’s thousands of waterways within southern Florida that have to be cleared. We’re just beginning to scratch the surface.”