A 41-year-old man is believed to have drowned Saturday after he left a pontoon to fix a motor and didn’t resurface at Cass Lake in northern Minnesota.
The Cass County Sheriff’s Office said it received 911 reports about 5:40 p.m. that a man had gone missing in the lake about 20 miles east of Bemidji, and a search got underway.
The Sheriff’s Office said juveniles aboard the boat tried to throw the Grafton, N.D., man a life jacket, but they began to drift away from him amid high winds. Other boaters eventually intercepted their boat.
Responders found the man about 7:50 p.m., the Sheriff’s Office said. He was not wearing a life jacket.
The Ramsey County Medical Examiner’s Office will conduct an autopsy. The incident remained under investigation.
The man’s name was not to be released until family members were notified.
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